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Mulled Wine

A hot drink of port wine heated with water, sugar, spice and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and clove work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 914 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mulled Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water with the spice and cloves, if using.

  2. Add the port wine and bring to a boil again.

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. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 flavour of the drink.
Spice
Adds aroma and warm flavour to the drink.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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