Skip to main content
Drink

To Mull Wine

A warm wine infusion made by boiling water with spices and sugar, then adding port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Mull Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water with the spices and sugar until it forms a thick syrup, being careful not to let it burn.

  2. Pour in the port wine and stir gently until it is just about to boil.

  3. Serve immediately, adding orange rind for extra flavor if desired.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the drink and thickens the spiced syrup base as it boils down.
Port wine
Provides the main body, sweetness and fruity flavor of the drink.
Spices
Supply the warm aroma and flavor that define the mulled character of the drink.

The step that matters

Forming the syrup without burning. Sugar syrup can scorch once its water has largely evaporated, because sugar caramelizes at high temperature and turns bitter. Keeping the heat moderate lets the syrup thicken evenly and keeps the flavor clean.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, ginger, clove, sugar, port wine):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Pearfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, ginger, clove, sugar, port wine. 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.

You might also like

Ginger WineGinger Wine12 recipesWine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipes