Caudles are warm seasoned wine or beer, thickened with eggs. Of course, during the Lenten season (from Ash Wednesday until Easter), dairy, eggs and meat animals were forbidden from consumption. Frequently, many conventional receipts from the period have Lenten substitutions using almond milk. The Harleian Manuscripts have two beer caudle recipes that use almonds. While some of the other caudle receipts that use almonds state they are for Lenten use, these two beer caudles do not.
Caudles were popular and receipts for caudles appear in the Harleian Manuscripts (my source), manuscripts in the possession of the Royal Society, Liber Cure Curcorum, Le Viandier, A Noble Boke of Cookery, and The Good Husvvifes Iewell. There may be other sources. Hot alcoholic beverages such as syllabubs and possets, as well as sack, toddies and others were also common.
Caudle seems to have been a recipe for comforting: a caudle receipt in "The Good Husvvifes Iewell" (Thomas Dawson, 1596) is one called "To Make a Caudle to Comfort the Stomacke, Good For An Old Man" (of ale, Muscadine wine, eggs and mace). My dictionary (and a footnote in Renfrow, 1991, vol 2, page 320) imply that the term coddle (pamper) could be derived from the word caudle.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/BEVERAGES/caudles-art.text is the source of this information.
A caudle was also a warm drink, but this time based on gruel, mixed with ale or wine to which spices, sugar or honey were added. As Stephen Maturin’s outburst suggests, caudles were commonly given to sick people and especially to women in childbed. The entry in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests that Mr Brewer shared Dr Maturin’s detestation, describing the caudle as “any sloppy mess, especially that sweet mixture of gruel and wine or spirits once given by nurses to recently confined women and their ‘gossips’ who called to see the baby during the first month”. Caudles were once common enough that they have given their name to a particular design of container, the caudle cup, from which they were presumably consumed; these were small two-handled cups with a cover, often of silver. The word itself derives from the Latin calidus, “warm”, from which we also get calorie and chowder and which turns up, much disguised, in nonchalant, meaning someone who doesn’t get hot under the collar. Another related word is cauldron; this is etymologically a pot for heating people rather than food, since it derives from the Latin calidarium for a hot bath.
We have made several different possets and caudles of various flavours for your enjoyment.
Click the cup on the tray to be offered a matching cup.
This tray is 5 prims
As with all our work, we will be happy to customize it for you for an additional fee if you contact Kittycat in world.
By the way, custom means we do different textures on the decanter or barrel, and perhaps on the cups/mugs/horns/glass inside plus edit the chatter the cup does. We are more than happy, at no additional fee, to change out any drink in any of the decanters for any others. We have no way of knowing what you like to drink, and do not consider taking a barrel we have made up and shifting the drinks in it to something else as custom. That is just good customer service.
Kittycat Ninetails
JohnQ Ballyhoo
Vasa Vella
