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Drink

To Mull Wine

A warm drink made by heating wine with nutmeg, sugar, egg yolks, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Mull Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced wine

  1. Grate half a nutmeg into a pint of wine and sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

  2. Heat the mixture over the fire until it boils, then remove to cool.

Thicken with egg

  1. Beat the yolks of four eggs and mix with a little cold wine.

  2. Gradually combine the egg mixture with the hot wine, stirring carefully.

  3. Pour the mixture back and forth until it looks fine and bright.

  4. Heat again until hot and slightly thick, then pour back and forth several times.

Serve

  1. Serve in chocolate cups with long slices of toasted bread.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the wine into a slightly creamy, silky body when gently heated.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the wine, balancing its tartness and the spice.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.
Wine
Forms the base of the drink, providing liquid, acidity and flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture after adding it to the wine. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if they get too hot or are added to hot wine too quickly. Stirring carefully and gently reheating keeps the drink smooth and slightly thick.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

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