Skip to main content
Breakfast

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

A thin gruel made from barley, wheat, or rice flour and water, optionally with diastase.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gruel

  1. Mix the flour with enough cold water to make a thin paste.

  2. Pour the paste into a quart of boiling water.

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

Finish

  1. If dextrinizing, cool the mixture.

  2. Add the diastase solution and stir.

  3. Strain the gruel.

  4. Add salt to taste.

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Barley, wheat, or rice flour
Provides the starch that thickens the water into a smooth gruel as it cooks.
Diastase solution
Enzymes that break down starch into dextrins, giving the gruel a thinner, sweeter taste.

The step that matters

Boil in a covered double boiler. Starch thickens and can scorch on direct heat. Gentle, covered heating for at least 15 minutes cooks the starch fully and prevents burning on the bottom of the pan.

“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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes