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Drink

Caudle

Caudle is a hot drink made from beer, oatmeal, ginger, nutmeg, sugar, and served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix enough oatmeal with a little beer to create a smooth paste.

  2. Add ginger, nutmeg, and sugar to the mixture.

  3. Boil the mixture thoroughly.

  4. Serve with a little loaf bread.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beer + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Beer + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 beer into a warming, porridge-like drink as it cooks.
Table beer
Forms the liquid base of the drink, giving its main flavour and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the beer and spices.

The step that matters

Make a smooth paste before adding the beer. Oatmeal dropped straight into hot liquid clumps and stays lumpy. Mixing it first with a little cold beer lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the whole drink smoothly when heated.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beer, ginger, sugar, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, ginger, sugar, bread. 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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