Name: Caudle
Ingredients: 6 tablespoons oatmeal; 1 quart malt liquor; ½ pint white wine; sugar to taste; spices (optional)

Why it works: Malt and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Make a gruel with the oatmeal and malt liquor.
Boil the mixture, then sweeten it.
Add the white wine and spices if desired.
Serve warm.

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.

Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together325 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Malt + white winetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

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 gruel, giving the drink its body.
Malt liquor: Forms the base liquid and adds malty flavour as it is simmered with the oats.
White wine: Adds acidity and a bright, fruity note that lifts the sweetness.

“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.