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Barley Gruel

A simple barley gruel made with barley flour, water, milk, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and flour work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 582 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barley Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the barley flour, salt, and sugar with a little cold water.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the milk and bring just to the boiling point.

  4. Strain through a fine wire strainer to remove hulls.

  5. Cook in a saucepan for 30 minutes or in a double boiler for 2 hours.

  6. Heat again with the milk just to the boiling point before serving.

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. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Barley flour
Forms the thickened body of the gruel as its starch cooks in the liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture to the finished gruel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the mild, earthy flavor of the barley.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine wire strainer to remove hulls. Barley flour can contain bits of hull that stay gritty if not removed. Straining after the initial boil leaves a smooth texture, so the strainer should be fine enough to catch them.

“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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