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Corn Starch Gruel

A simple gruel made from corn starch, water, salt, and optional sugar and cinnamon, thickened and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and cinnamon work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Corn Starch Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the corn starch and salt with a little cold water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the boiling water.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes or until the desired consistency is reached.

  4. Add sugar and cinnamon if desired, then thin with milk.

  5. Strain and serve 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. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Corn starch
Thickens the water into a smooth gruel as its starch granules swell when heated.

The step that matters

Make a smooth paste before adding the boiling water. Cornstarch clumps when it hits hot liquid directly. Mixing it with cold water first separates the granules so they disperse evenly and thicken without lumps.

“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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