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

Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil.
Mix enough oatmeal with 1 pint of cold water to create a smooth paste.
Once the water is boiling, stir in the oatmeal mixture and the powdered Jamaica peppers.
Boil until the mixture thickens to a medium consistency.
Add sugar, table beer, and gin, then boil 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 medium-bodied, gruel-like consistency as its starch gelatinises when boiled.
Table beer: Adds a sour, yeasty tang and some body to the liquid.
Gin: Adds alcohol and a botanical aroma, and is added at the end so less of it boils off.
Jamaica peppers: Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the caudle.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture thickens to a medium consistency. Oatmeal starch thickens as it heats and swells, and it keeps thickening as it cools. Stop too early and the caudle stays thin; boil too long and it becomes stiff and gluey.

“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 for the sick recipes

and Lying-In 3

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