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Drink

Oatmeal Caudle

A warm oatmeal drink thickened with egg yolk, sugar, and spirit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,340 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Oatmeal Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour the oatmeal gruel into a saucepan and heat until hot but not boiling.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, egg yolk, and brandy or whiskey, or sherry or port.

Make the caudle

  1. Add the beaten mixture to the hot gruel and stir over low heat for a few minutes.

  2. Remove from heat before it boils to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Oatmeal gruel
Forms the warm liquid base, and its oat starch gives the caudle body and thickness.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the caudle as its proteins gently set with heat.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the richness of the egg yolk and the alcohol.
Brandy, whiskey, sherry or port
Adds aroma and warming flavour to the caudle.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and stop before boiling. Egg yolk proteins set when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils it can curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thickened caudle.

“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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