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Flour Caudle

A warm drink made by simmering flour, water, milk, butter, salt, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Flour Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with ½ pint of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Add ½ pint of new milk and lemon peel or flavoring to taste.

  3. Melt a small piece of butter in a saucepan.

  4. Add a pinch of salt, ½ pint of new milk, and ½ pint of water, and simmer until smooth.

  5. Add sweetening and flavoring to taste.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats and gelatinises, giving the caudle its body.
New milk
Adds richness, creaminess and a mild sweetness to the thin gruel.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmer until smooth. Mix the flour fully into the cold water before heating so the starch disperses without lumps. As the mixture heats, the starch granules swell and thicken it. Stir often so the milk does not scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter. 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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