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Drink

Caudle White

A warm, sweet drink made with flour, water, milk, sugar, nutmeg, sherry, lemon juice, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 White

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the flour with the water until smooth.

  2. Add the boiling milk and sugar, then simmer for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the nutmeg, sherry, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture until boiling, then add the egg yolk.

  3. Stir for 2 minutes and pour into a cup immediately.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the caudle body.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the mixture as its proteins set with gentle heat.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, and its proteins help give the drink a soft texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the drink.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Once the yolk is added, the mixture must be stirred while heated to just boiling. Egg proteins set with heat, so overheating or letting it sit can curdle the drink and leave it grainy rather than smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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