Caudle

A caudle is a British thickened and sweetened alcoholic hot drink, somewhat like eggnog. It was popular in the Middle Ages for its supposed medicinal properties.

Origin

The OED cites the use of the word to 1297. The earliest surviving recipe, from 1300–1325, is simply a list of ingredients: wine, wheat starch, raisins, and sugar to "abate the strength of the wine".^[1] In a description of an initiation ceremony at Merton College, Oxford in 1647, caudle is described as a "syrupy gruel with spices and wine or ale added".^[2]

Recipes

Another recipe from the late 14th century has more ingredients and more details on the cooking procedure: mix breadcrumbs, wine, sugar or honey, and saffron, bring to a boil, then thicken with egg yolks, and sprinkle with salt, sugar, and ginger.^[3][4] A 15th-century English cookbook includes three caudle recipes: ale or wine is heated and thickened with egg yolks and/or ground almonds, then optionally spiced with sugar, honey, saffron, and/or ginger (one recipe specifically says "no salt").^[5] William Carew Hazlitt provides a number of recipes for caudles and possets in his book, Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine.^[6]

A related recipe for skyr appears in the early 13th century.^[7]

Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 describes it as "a drink of warm gruel, mixed with spice and wine, formerly given to women in childbed".^[8]

Etymology

The word caudle came into Middle English via the Old North French word caudel, ultimately derived from Latin caldus, "warm".^[9] The Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 states the word derived from Medieval Latin caldellum, a diminutive of caldum, a warm drink, from calidus, hot.^[8]

See also

• List of hot beverages
• Posset

Notes

1. Hieatt and Butler 1985, p. 45, Item 5.
2. Olmert 1996, p. 174.
3. Hieatt and Butler 1985, Item 43.
4. Austin 1888.
5. Hieatt and Pensado 1988, Items 83, 84 and 139.
6. Hazlitt 1886.
7. Grewe and Hieatt 2001, p. 42.
8.  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Caudle". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
9. Harper.

References

• Thomas Austin (1888). Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Early English Text Society. ISBN 978-5-87685-811-5.
• Harper, Douglas. "Online Etymology Dictionary: caudle". Retrieved 21 November 2012.
• William Carew Hazlitt (1886). Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine.
• Constance B. Hieatt; Sharon Butler (1985). Curye on Inglysch: English culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century (including the Forme of cury). Early English Text Society. ISBN 978-0-19-722409-0.
• Rudolf Grewe; Constance B. Hieatt (2001). Libellus De Arte Coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. ISBN 978-0-86698-264-1.
• Constance B. Hieatt; Eulalia Pensado (1988). An Ordinance of pottage: an edition of the fifteenth century culinary recipes in Yale University's Ms Beinecke 163. Prospect Books and Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. ISBN 978-0-907325-38-3.
• Michael Olmert (1996). Milton's teeth & Ovid's umbrella: curiouser and curiouser adventures in history. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-80164-3.