Name: Caudle for the Sick and Lying-In
Ingredients: 3 quarts water; oatmeal (enough to thicken); 1 pint cold water; 20 Jamaica peppers (finely powdered); sugar (to taste); ½ pint well fermented table beer; 1 glass gin

Why it works: Pepper and beer work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 940 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Caudle for the Sick and Lying-In

Ingredients

Directions

Set 3 quarts of water on the fire.
Mix enough oatmeal with 1 pint of cold water to thicken the mixture.
When boiling, pour in the oatmeal mixture.
Add 20 finely powdered Jamaica peppers and boil to a medium thickness.
Stir in sugar to taste, ½ pint of table beer, and 1 glass of gin.
Boil the mixture again.

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.

Pepper + beertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together940 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + gintop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together344 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beer + gintop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together22 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together699 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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: Thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich caudle as it cooks.
Table beer: Adds fermented, slightly sour flavour and some liquid body to the drink.
Gin: Adds alcohol and aromatic botanical flavour to the finished drink.
Jamaica peppers: Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour as they simmer in the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the oatmeal mixture to boiling water. Oatmeal starch thickens only when heated, and pouring it into water that is already boiling helps it disperse evenly. Stirring while pouring prevents lumps, which would give the caudle an uneven texture.

“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.

More caudle recipes

Rice 21 Flour 14 Cold 8 Brown 6 White 4 for the Sick and Lying-In 3 See all 29 →

Spruce Beer58 recipes

Ginger Beer11 recipes

Vegetable Soup350 recipes

Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Caudle for the Sick and Lying-In