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Dessert

A Caudle for Sweet Pyes

A caudle made with sherry, wine, verjuice, sugar, and eggs, poured into baked sweet pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and white wine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Caudle for Sweet Pyes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caudle

  1. Combine the sack and white wine in a saucepan.

  2. Add verjuice and sugar.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Whisk in the eggs until well combined.

Fill the pies

  1. Once the pies are baked, pour the mixture into the pies through the funnel and shake gently.

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. Sherry + white winetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sherry + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

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

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set as they heat, thickening the liquid into a light custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the verjuice and wine.
Verjuice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sweet, rich flavour.
Sack
Contributes fortified wine sweetness and aroma to the caudle.
White wine
Supplies liquid and light acidity to the base.

The step that matters

Whisk in the eggs until well combined. Egg proteins scramble when they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Whisking constantly and combining thoroughly spreads the heat evenly, so the mixture stays smooth and thickens rather than curdling.

“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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