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Mulled Wine Without Eggs

A warm beverage made by heating wine with water, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Wine Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced base

  1. Dissolve sugar in water.

  2. Bring to a near boil.

  3. Boil spices in the water until the flavor is extracted.

Add the wine and heat

  1. Add the wine to the mixture.

  2. Bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with strips of crisp, dry toast or biscuits.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

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

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

Wine
Provides the main body, flavor and alcohol of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine's acidity and tannin.
Spices
Contribute the warm aroma and flavor that define the drink.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil after adding the wine. Alcohol evaporates as the wine heats, and prolonged boiling can drive off the wine's fresh aromas and make the drink taste harsh or flat.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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