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Drink

Hypocras

Hypocras is a spiced wine made by infusing sugar, cinnamon, marjoram, long pepper, musk, and lemon juice into white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and marjoram work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 134 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl decanoate, which smells grape, waxy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. In a mortar, grossly beat the sugar, cinnamon, marjoram, and long pepper.

  2. Filter the mixture through a bag.

Make the liquor

  1. Add the musk and lemon juice.

  2. Gently heat the liquid over the fire.

  3. Pour the liquid over the spices again.

Rest and bottle

  1. Let it stand for 3-4 days.

  2. Strain through a filtering bag and bottle 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. White wine + marjoramtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  2. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together957 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cinnamon + marjoramtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

White wine
Forms the liquid base that carries the sugar and spice flavours.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the wine and lemon.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the finished drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, spiced wine.

The step that matters

Gently heat the liquid. Heating gently helps the sugar dissolve and draws flavour from the spices without boiling away the wine's aromatic volatiles. Strong boiling would dull the aroma and can make the drink taste harsh or cooked.

Flavor stand-ins for the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sugar, marjoram, pepper, lemon):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Basilbetter flavor fit
  3. Rosemarybetter flavor fit
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar, marjoram, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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