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Drink

Flour Caudle

A hot drink made by mixing flour with water, then adding boiled milk and sugar, and cooking over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Flour Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour with the water in a bowl.

  2. Boil the milk and add the sugar until dissolved.

Combine and cook

  1. Pour the milk mixture over the flour and water.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring often for 20 minutes.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the caudle its body.
Milk
Supplies the liquid base and adds richness and creaminess to the finished caudle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Stirring during the low-heat cook. Flour starch thickens as it heats in liquid, but it can clump or scorch on the base if left unstirred. Stirring often keeps the caudle smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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