Glögg - Elevated from Comments

[akirlu]

In comments betnoir asks about a recipe for glögg -- a traditional Swedish drink in the Yuletide. As I mentioned to her, easiest is to just buy a bottle of mix from Ikea -- or Cost Plus, for that matter. But doing it yourself is about equally trivial. It's just mulled wine. Here's approximately what I learned at my mother's knee.

1 jug cheap red plonk of your choice - burgundy or port, usually
2-4 sticks cinnamon
10-20 whole cloves
5-8 whole cardomom kernels
1 cup sugar
a handful of raisins
6 blanched almonds
1/2 each thinly sliced lemon, lime, and orange

Pour the wine in a large cookpot, add the sugar, spices, raisins, citrus, and nuts and heat until steaming, stirring periodically. Heat at steam point for 5-15 minutes to let spices steep. Serve in glass mugs.

As with most other Swedish recipes I know, there are oodles of variants. Googling, I see that lots of recipes include between a 1/4 cup to a full liter of plain vodka. Our family never added vodka, but depending on how much you want to put your guests on their butts, you can add that much vodka. Lots of the recipes I see use just citrus peel rather than whole slices, but I think the slices look pretty floating in the wine, and besides It's How My Mother Did It. You can vary the amount of sugar to taste, and can either steep the spices in vodka overnight and discard the spices and just use the vodka, or make a spiced simple sugar syrup and then add the wine, vodka, and fruit at the end. I see at least one recipe including a bit of ginger. And you can play with how many or few citrus types you use.

But the basic core is this: red wine, Christmas spices, raisins, sugar, and citrus, mixed together and heated 'til steaming. The rest is endless variation to suit your tastes and larder.

Comments

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yayy!

Thank you!

I do have a vague recollection of Maria saying that she used aquavit, which I suppose could be subbed for the vodka?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure aquavit can be subbed for the vodka -- that would presumably be more "correct", but since one flavorable white potato distillate is much like another, it shouldn't make much difference. Since it's mulled, I wouldn't waste The Good Stuff on the recipe, and in the US, vodka will generally be more cheaply available than aquavit.

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

It's pretty close to a number of hot spiced wine mixes from the last 1600 or so years. There's a fun little book, Drinking with Dickens, that lists a number of Regency and early Victorian drinks. And then there's Purl, ale and porter mixed, with a slice of gingerroot added, mulled, then a tot of gin and a bit of nutmeg. That's about a typical US bottle of each, plus 25 or so ml of gin, of at least proof.

A bit of history

http://www.wineintro.com/mulled/index.html

http://www.theartofdrink.com/book/intro.php