Name: To Mull Wine
Ingredients: 1 cup water; 1 cup port wine; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg; 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional); toast for serving

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

To Mull Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mulled wine

Boil the water with spices until the flavor is extracted.
Add the port wine, sugar, and nutmeg; boil together.

Serve

Serve hot with toast.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Port wine + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together241 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Port wine + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together462 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,364 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and cinnamon 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: Provides the main body, sweetness and fruity flavor of the drink.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness and alcohol of the wine.
Nutmeg: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the drink.

“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.