1. Etymology

2. Recipes

3. "For the sick and lying-in"

4. As a metonym

5. Implements

6. Other uses

7. See also

8. References

9. Further reading

A caudle (or caudel)^[1] is a thickened and sweetened hot drink, somewhat like eggnog. Like a posset, it was usually alcoholic. It was popular in the Middle Ages for its supposed medicinal properties.

Etymology

The word caudle came into Middle English via the Old North French word caudel, ultimately derived from Latin caldus, "warm"{{sfn|Harper}}. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica states the word derived from Medieval Latin caldellum, a diminutive of caldum, a warm drink, from calidus, hot.^[2] The Oxford English Dictionary cites the use of the word to 1297. The word's etymological connection to heat makes it cognate with "cauldron".

Recipes

A related recipe for skyr appears in the early 13th century.{{sfn|Grewe and Hieatt|2001|p=42}} The earliest surviving recipe for caudle, from 1300–1325, is simply a list of ingredients: wine, wheat starch, raisins, and sugar to "abate the strength of the wine".{{sfn|Hieatt and Butler|1985|loc=Item 5|p=45}}

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.{{sfn|Hieatt and Butler|1985|loc=Item 43}}{{sfn|Austin|1888}} 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").{{sfn|Hieatt and Pensado|1988|loc=Items 83, 84 and 139}} 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".{{sfn|Olmert|1996|p=174}} William Carew Hazlitt provides a number of recipes for caudles and possets in his 1886 book, Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine.{{sfn|Hazlitt|1886}}

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as "a drink of warm gruel, mixed with spice and wine, formerly given to women in childbed"^[2], i.e. as a restorative food during her postpartum confinement.

Emily Post's 1922 Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, the classic guide to American manners, states that "although according to cook-books caudle is a gruel, the actual "caudle" invariably served at christenings is a hot eggnog, drunk out of little punch cups"^[3] (see Punch bowl).

"For the sick and lying-in"

Aside from the initiation ceremony mentioned above, caudle was often served to people who were seen to need strengthening, especially invalids and new mothers. A historian of Georgian England says that maternity hospitals always served a "traditional postlabor fortified caudle" to women who had just given birth.^[4] The British Lying-In Hospital had "Laws, Orders, and Regulations" printed to be displayed on the wards, detailing among other things the menu. Mothers on the "low diet" had caudle; when they graduated to the "common diet" it was beer caudle; and the "full diet" had no need of the invalid liquid any more.^[5]

As a metonym

As caudel was served to new mothers to build up their strength, so it was offered to their visitors, to share in the happy occasion. "Cake and caudel" or "taking caudle" became the accepted phrases for a "lying-in visit", when women went to see their friends' new babies. These were all-female occasions, as more than one man noted. The American playwright Royall Tyler has one of the female characters in the comedy of manners The Contrast (1787) decline the offer of a man's escorting her by claiming that "half [her] visits are cake and caudel" and therefore unsuitable for him.^[9] A generation later in 1821, Thomas Gaspey wrote of these visits (with the italics in the original):

'Twas then Eliza, though now Mrs T.

We ought to call her, gave her lord an heir,

And all her female friends, the babe to see

And praise its beauty, failed not to repair;

But half what they to utter there thought meet,

While taking caudle, I must not repeat.

Offering caudel, or cake and caudel, to all lying-in visitors is referred to as an old British custom. Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, bore him 15 princes and princesses. After the christening of the youngest, Princess Amelia in 1783, "the greater part of the company then paid a visit to the nursery, where they were entertained (as usual on such occasions) with cake and caudel."^[10] This continued into Queen Victoria's reign: the day after she gave birth to the Prince of Wales, "many of the female Nobility called at Buckingham Palace, and were received by Lady Charlemont, the Lady in waiting, and after taking caudle were taken to the north wing to see the infant Prince." ^[11]

But it was not just nobles who came. The The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée reported that the aftermath of a royal birth was "a usual reception of the public to cake and caudel"^[12]. The London Chronicle reported in 1765 that "The resort of different ranks of people at St. James's to receive the Queen's Caudle is now very great."^[13]

Implements

There was a vessel particular to the drink, a caudle cup, a traditional gift for a pregnant woman,^[14] "which used to be handed round the young mother's chamber", according to Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr..^[15]

After the birth of Princess Augusta Sophia, sixth child of George III and Queen Charlotte:

Connected with the event of her Royal Highness's birth, during the usual reception of the public to cake and caudle, on Sunday 13th of November, 1768, a curious incident occurred at the Palace: - two young ladies, after having drank plentifully of caudle, were detected in carrying off a large portion of the cake, and some of the cups in which the caudle had been served; they were allowed, however, to escape with a severe reprimand, after begging pardon on their knees for so disgraceful an act.^[16].

Other uses

A caudle formed part of the Beltane (May Day) fire festival celebrations collated by James Frazier in The Golden Bough. He quotes at length Thomas Pennant, " who travelled in Perthshire in the year 1769":

"on the first of May, the herdsmen of every village hold their Bel-tien, a rural sacrifice. They cut a square trench on the ground, leaving the turf in the middle; on that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal and milk; and bring besides the ingredients of the caudle, plenty of beer and whisky; for each of the company must contribute something. The rites begin with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by way of libation: on that every one takes a cake of oatmeal, upon which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer of them: each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a knob, and flinging it over his shoulders, says, 'This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; and so on.' After that, they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals: 'This I give to thee, O fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow! this to thee, O eagle!' When the ceremony is over, they dine on the caudle; and after the feast is finished, what is left is hid by two persons deputed for that purpose; but on the next Sunday they reassemble, and finish the reliques of the first entertainment."

Frazier notes other Scottish May Day celebrations with similar dishes, "a repast of eggs and milk in the consistence of a custard".^[17]

Apparently it was "a custom in France to bring the bridegroom a caudle in the middle of the night on his wedding-night", according to an explanatory note in an 1877 edition of The Essays of Montaigne, presumably inserted by the English editor, William Carew Hazlitt.^[18]

See also

• List of hot beverages
• Wassail

References

Further reading

• {{cite book|author=Thomas Austin|title=Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-OMMAwAAQBAJ|year=1888|publisher=Early English Text Society|isbn=978-5-87685-811-5| ref={{sfnref|Austin|1888}} }}
• {{cite web|last=Harper|first=Douglas|title=Online Etymology Dictionary: caudle|url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=caudle&searchmode=none|accessdate=21 November 2012| ref={{sfnref|Harper}} }}
• {{cite book|author= William Carew Hazlitt|title=Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12293|year=1886|ref={{sfnref|Hazlitt|1886}}}}
• {{cite book|author1=Constance B. Hieatt|author2=Sharon Butler|title=Curye on Inglysch: English culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century (including the Forme of cury)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eSJ3ngEACAAJ|year=1985|publisher=Early English Text Society|isbn=978-0-19-722409-0| ref={{sfnref|Hieatt and Butler|1985}} }}
• {{cite book|author1=Rudolf Grewe|author2=Constance B. Hieatt|title=Libellus De Arte Coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7u7gAAAAMAAJ|year=2001|publisher=Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies|isbn=978-0-86698-264-1 | ref={{sfnref|Grewe and Hieatt|2001}} }}
• {{cite book|author1=Constance B. Hieatt|author2=Eulalia Pensado|title=An Ordinance of pottage: an edition of the fifteenth century culinary recipes in Yale University's Ms Beinecke 163|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=opMgAQAAIAAJ|year=1988|publisher=Prospect Books and Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library|isbn=978-0-907325-38-3| ref={{sfnref|Hieatt and Pensado|1988}} }}
• {{cite book|author=Michael Olmert|title=Milton's teeth & Ovid's umbrella: curiouser and curiouser adventures in history|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IiNBAAAAMAAJ|year=1996|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=978-0-684-80164-3 | ref={{sfnref|Olmert|1996}} }}

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