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Hice Gruel

A thin porridge made from ground rice, cinnamon, water and orange marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Hice Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water in a pot.

  2. Add the ground rice and cinnamon.

  3. Cook for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Stir in the orange marmalade 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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Its starch thickens the water as it cooks, giving the gruel body.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma and flavour to the gruel.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright citrus flavour at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Stirring during the 40-minute cook. Ground rice starch settles and sticks to the bottom of the pot, where it can scorch. Occasional stirring keeps the starch dispersed, so the gruel cooks evenly and thickens smoothly.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cinnamon):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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