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Drink

Cold Caudle

A chilled beverage made with spring water, egg yolk, lemon juice, sweet wine, sugar, and lemon syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cold Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the spring water and let it cool.

Make the caudle

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolk and lemon juice.

  2. Add the sweet wine and sugar to the egg mixture.

  3. Stir in the cooled water gradually.

  4. Finally, mix in the lemon syrup.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the liquid, giving the caudle a smooth, creamy body.
Sweet wine
Adds sweetness and aroma, balancing the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright flavour that cuts the sweetness.
Spring water
Forms the liquid base that dilutes the mixture to a drinkable consistency.

The step that matters

Stir in the cooled water gradually. Adding hot or quickly poured liquid to egg yolk can scramble it. Cooling the water first and adding it slowly lets the yolk blend in smoothly without curdling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, wine, sugar, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, wine, sugar, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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