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Mulled Claret, a LA Lord Saltoun

A mulled claret drink with lemon, verbena, sugar, soda water, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mulled Claret, a LA Lord Saltoun

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the rind off the lemon and add some powdered sugar.

  2. Pour the Sherry and claret over the lemon and sugar, sweeten to taste.

  3. Add a sprig of verbena and soda water, along with nutmeg if desired.

  4. Strain the mixture and ice it well.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sherry + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Forms the wine base that supplies most of the drink's body and flavour.
Sherry
Adds fortified depth and a dry, nutty note to the wine base.
Lemon
Its rind and juice add aromatic oils and acidity that brighten the wine.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, lemon, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, lemon, 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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