Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Hot Mulled Wine
Hot Mulled Wine
Mrs. Bendelari.
To every pint of wine allow one large cup of water, one tablespoon of sugar, half a salt spoon of cloves, half a salt spoon of cinnamon, half a salt spoon of nutmeg. First tie your spices in a muslin bag, and put the water into a porcelain saucepan with the spices, and when it has simmered a few minutes add the wine.
A spiced wine of the plainest Victorian type: a spice infusion made first in water, with the wine added at the end. The proportions scale directly, so it works for one bottle or six.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe wine goes in only after the spiced water has simmered. The recipe says nothing about the heat thereafter, but it is worth keeping the pan below a simmer: prolonged boiling drives off alcohol and can leave the wine tasting flat and stewed.
- A salt spoonThe saltspoon of a Victorian cruet set held about a quarter teaspoon, so half a saltspoon is roughly an eighth of a teaspoon of each spice. With three spices at that rate per pint the seasoning is deliberately light.
- A pint and a large cupA pint is 2 cups — though in a Toronto book of this date it may be the 16 oz US pint (473 ml) or the 20 oz imperial pint (568 ml). The "large cup" is loose but read it as a full 8 oz, which makes the water roughly a third of the total volume.
- Porcelain saucepanThis means an enamelled or lined pan rather than bare copper, iron or aluminium, all of which react with acidic wine and can throw a metallic taste. Enamelled cast iron, stainless steel or glass all serve.
- Spices in the bagUse whole spices where you can — a few cloves, a cinnamon stick broken up, a little grated nutmeg — since ground spice escapes muslin and clouds the wine. A tea ball or a square of cheesecloth works as well as a bag.
- Which wineNineteenth-century recipes of this kind assumed port, claret or sherry. A dry red of no great subtlety is the practical choice; anything oaky or tannic turns harsh when heated.
- SugarOne tablespoon per pint is barely sweet by modern taste. Add it with the water so it dissolves, then taste after the wine is warmed and adjust.
- YieldEach pint of wine gives about 3 cups of finished drink, enough for two generous mugs or three small ones. Serve at once; reheating drives off more alcohol each time.
Warm spiced wine is one of the oldest continuously made drinks in Europe, traced back to the Roman conditum and carried through the medieval spiced wines known as hippocras and piment, which are traditionally said to have been strained through a cloth sleeve much as this recipe strains its flavour through muslin. By the time The Home Cook Book was compiled in 1870s Toronto from contributions by named local women hem them them — Mrs. Bendelari among them — mulled wine had become a cold-weather sociable drink, and it is often said to have served as sickroom cookery as well, which may account for the mildness here: a third water, a spoonful of sugar, and only a whisper of clove and cinnamon. The habit of infusing the spices in water first, rather than in the wine, had a practical point, since it let the cook extract the spice properly without holding the wine over heat long enough to spoil it.