Name: Mulled Claret
Ingredients: 1 pint of claret; ½ pint of boiling water; sugar to taste; nutmeg to taste; cinnamon to taste

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 ↓

Mulled Claret

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the claret nearly to boiling point.
Add the boiling water, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
Serve hot.

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).
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

Claret: Provides the main wine flavour and body, with its tannins giving the drink structure.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the wine's tannins and acidity.
Nutmeg: Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the drink.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, sweet aromatic notes that complement the wine.

“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.