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Mulled Pear & Cranberry Punch

Hot pear cider, apple and cranberry juice plus sloe gin with cinnamon - you can't get a better winter cocktail than this

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and gin work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and 10 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

MAKES 8-10 glasses
Prep5 min
Cook5 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Pour the pear cider, pear or cloudy apple juice and cranberry juice into a large saucepan.

  2. Add the fresh or dried cranberries, the two cinnamon sticks and the two scored vanilla pods.

  3. Warm over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until steaming and well flavored. Do not let it boil.

  4. Turn off the heat and stir in the sloe gin.

  5. Ladle into heatproof glasses or mugs, using the cranberries and spices from the pan as you go, and serve warm.

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cranberry + gintop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pear + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Cinnamon + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Cranberry + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Pear + cranberrytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, cider, cranberry, gin, cinnamon):

  1. Applebetter flavor fit
  2. Orangebetter flavor fit
  3. Peachbetter flavor fit
  4. Vanillathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, cider, cranberry, gin, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).