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Drink

Caudle for the Sick and Lying-in

A warm beverage made with oatmeal, water, Jamaica pepper, sugar, beer, and gin, intended for sick and lying‑in patients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil.

  2. Mix enough oatmeal with 1 pint of cold water to create a smooth paste.

Make the caudle

  1. Once the water is boiling, stir in the oatmeal mixture and the powdered Jamaica peppers.

  2. Cook until the mixture reaches a medium thickness.

  3. Add sugar, ½ pint of table beer, and 1 glass of gin.

  4. 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.

  1. Pepper + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sugar + gintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Beer + gintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 recipes

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

  5. 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
Starch that swells in hot water and thickens the liquid into a gruel-like body.
Table beer
Adds a light, tangy fermented flavour and some thin liquid to the drink.
Gin
Adds alcoholic aroma and flavour, and helps keep the drink from tasting flat.
Jamaica peppers
Provide warm, spicy aroma and flavour to the gruel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp beer and gin.

The step that matters

Stirring the oatmeal paste into boiling water. Oatmeal lumps form if the paste is added to water that is not fully boiling or not stirred. Starch granules swell unevenly and stay clumped, so the caudle turns gritty instead of smoothly 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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