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Drink

Caudle

A warm or cold beverage made from grits, wine, lemon, sugar, and egg yolk, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the grits base

  1. Make a smooth gruel with the grits and strain it when boiled well.

  2. Stir the gruel until cold.

  3. Add sugar, wine, lemon peel, and nutmeg to the gruel.

Make the cold caudle

  1. Boil 1 quart of spring water for cold caudle.

  2. Cool the boiled water.

  3. Add the egg yolk, lemon juice, sweet wine, sugar, and lemon syrup to the cooled water.

Make the flour caudle

  1. Mix flour with water for flour caudle.

  2. Set the flour mixture over heat with milk and sugar.

  3. Once boiling, stir in the flour mixture.

  4. Cook over low heat for 20 minutes.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Grits
Thickens the gruel as they cook, giving the caudle body and a soft, smooth texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches the liquid and adds richness and body to the cold caudle.
Fine flour
Thickens the milk mixture when heated, giving the flour caudle a smooth, set body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the flour caudle.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the caudle.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling liquid. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly or without stirring. Mixing it into the boiling liquid while stirring keeps it smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, wine, nutmeg, egg, syrup, flour, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, nutmeg, egg, syrup, flour, milk. 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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