Skip to main content
Drink

Hice Caudle

A warm milk-based drink with rice, sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Hice Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the grated rice in water for 1 hour, then strain it.

Make the caudle

  1. In a pot, combine 2 tablespoons of soaked rice with 1¼ cups of milk. Simmer until the mixture can be passed through a sieve.

  2. Add the pulp, sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and brandy to the pot. Boil until smooth and serve.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Grated rice
Thickens the drink as its starch cooks and breaks down into a smooth pulp.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the rice pulp thickens and carries flavour in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the spices and the brandy.
Brandy
Adds alcohol flavour and aroma, added at the end of cooking.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice that flavours the milk.

The step that matters

Simmer until the mixture can be passed through a sieve. Rice starch thickens milk as it cooks, but if the mixture is not cooked long enough the rice stays grainy and will not strain into a smooth pulp. Stirring keeps milk from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, cinnamon, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, cinnamon, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Rice WaterRice Water82 recipesRice MilkRice Milk37 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipes