Caudel

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A warm, spiced drink of thin gruel mixed with wine or ale, traditionally given to invalids
2. A soothing hot beverage made from oatmeal gruel enriched with wine or ale, once served to people who were ill
3. Historically, a sweetened and spiced gruel blended with wine or ale and offered to the sick for comfort

Etymology: Caudel is a warm drink of thin gruel mixed with wine or ale, sweetened and spiced, once served to invalids and women after childbirth. The name comes from Old French "caudel," which descends from Late Latin "caldellum," a diminutive of Latin "calidus," meaning "warm" or "hot." The word, in other words, is simply a little warm thing, and its whole history is contained in the idea of heat. English borrowed the word in the Middle Ages, when the drink was a fixture of the sickroom and the lying-in chamber. Recipes survive from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that call for oatmeal or bread steeped in ale, boiled with sugar, saffron and spices, which explains why the drink was regarded as restorative rather than merely nourishing. Because the drink was meant to be warm and easily digested, the word stayed tied to convalescence long after most people had stopped making it. Its later use is mostly historical, appearing in cookery books and in literature set in earlier centuries.