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Caudle

A warm ale-based soup with flour, egg, gruel, wine, brandy, capillaire, butter, and citrus peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a saucepan, combine ½ pint of strong ale with moist sugar, ground mace, and ground ginger to taste. Heat until warm.

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 1 pint of water until smooth.

  3. Cook on the stove, stirring constantly, until it boils.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool completely.

  6. Prepare 1 pint of gruel with oatmeal and water.

Make the caudle

  1. Beat an egg until foamy.

  2. Mix the foamy egg with 1 cup of the cooled gruel and ⅓ cup of white wine.

  3. Sweeten to taste and add grated nutmeg.

  4. Stir in ⅓ cup of brandy, ⅓ cup of capillaire, 2 tablespoons of butter, and thinly shredded lemon peel.

  5. Heat until just boiling.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Beaten egg thickens the warm liquid into a smooth, creamy, custard-like body.
Flour
Stirred into water and cooked, it thickens the mixture and gives it body.
Butter
Stirred in at the end, it adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Strong ale
Forms the malty, slightly bitter liquid base that carries the spices and sugar.

The step that matters

Heat until just boiling after adding the egg mixture. Egg proteins set when heated. Boiling after the egg is added can curdle or scramble it, so the caudle should be heated only until just boiling and kept from overheating.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, flour, egg, white wine, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, flour, egg, white wine, lemon, nutmeg. 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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