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Drink

Hypocras, As Made in France

Hypocras is a spiced wine made by infusing red wine with sugar, spices, citrus peel, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hypocras, As Made in France

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the spices in a mortar before adding them to the wine.

  2. Combine the sugar, cinnamon, coriander seeds, white peppercorns, orange peel, mace, lemon juice, and cloves in a quart of red wine.

Infuse and clarify

  1. Let the mixture infuse for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Add the milk and filter the liquid through a flannel or cotton bag until clear.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the hypocras for use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Coriander + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + coriandertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red wine
Forms the liquid base and supplies the body and tannin of the drink.
Powdered loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the astringency of the wine and spices.
Milk
Binds fine particles so they can be strained out, leaving the liquid clear.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the wine and sharpens the spice flavours.

The step that matters

Filtering until clear. Spice particles and fine sediment stay suspended unless the liquid is given time to settle and is strained carefully. Adding the milk helps bind the particles, so rushing the filtering leaves the hypocras cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, sugar, cinnamon, coriander, orange, lemon, clove):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, sugar, cinnamon, coriander, orange, lemon, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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