Name: Mulled Wine
Ingredients: 1 pint port wine; 2-3 cloves; 1 small piece of cinnamon; loaf sugar to taste; a little grated nutmeg; 1 slice of toasted bread, crust removed, cut into oblong pieces

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mulled Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mulled wine

In a saucepan, combine the port wine, cloves, and cinnamon.
Boil for a few minutes, then remove the spices.
Sweeten with loaf sugar and add grated nutmeg.

Serve

Serve with a slice of toasted bread on the side.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together914 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Port wine: Forms the liquid base and supplies the main flavour of the drink.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the wine's tannins and acidity.
Cloves: Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, sweet aromatic flavour to the wine.
Toasted bread: Serves as a plain, dry accompaniment that offsets the sweet, spiced wine.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, bread):

Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well
Cardamomfits less well
Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, bread. 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.