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Indian Meal Gruel

A simple gruel made by boiling water with salt and Indian meal, served warm with optional additions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Indian Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, bring 1 quart of water to a boil and add salt.

  2. In a bowl, mix the Indian meal with a little cold water to remove lumps.

Cook

  1. Stir the meal mixture into the boiling water.

  2. Cook for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve warm, optionally adding a spoonful of wheat flour, a few raisins, or a beaten egg with a little sugar.

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

Indian meal
Cornmeal that thickens the boiling water into a smooth, porridge-like gruel as its starch cooks.

The step that matters

Mixing the meal with cold water before adding it. Dry cornmeal clumps when it hits hot liquid, and the outside of each clump cooks into a gel that traps dry meal inside. Blending it smooth in cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the gruel cooks 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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