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Diluents: Sugar Water, Plain Cereal Gruel, or Dextrinized Gruel

A thin gruel made from barley, wheat, rice flour, oats, boiled water, diastase, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Diluents: Sugar Water, Plain Cereal Gruel, or Dextrinized Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour or oats with enough cold water to make a thin paste.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pot with 1 quart of boiling water.

Cook

  1. Boil for at least 15 minutes in a covered double boiler to prevent burning.

  2. If dextrinizing, place the pot in cold water, cool the gruel, then stir in the diastase solution.

  3. Strain the mixture, add salt to taste, and let it cool.

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 + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

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

  2. Barley + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Wheat + oatstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  4. Wheat + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Barley + oatstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together224 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Barley flour
Provides starch that the diastase converts into dextrins, giving the gruel its body.
Wheat flour
Adds starch that thickens the gruel as it cooks.
Rice flour
Adds starch that thickens the gruel as it cooks.
Rolled oats
Adds starch and body to the gruel as it cooks.
Diastase solution
Enzyme that breaks down starch into dextrins, thinning the gruel and adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the diastase. Diastase is an enzyme that is weakened by heat, so the gruel must be cooled before it is stirred in to convert the starch into dextrins.

“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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