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Gruel of Kernel Flour or Middlings

A gruel made from kernel flour or middlings, boiled with water, milk, sugar, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Henrietta Latham Dwight · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gruel of Kernel Flour or Middlings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gruel

  1. Put a pint of boiling water in a saucepan over the fire.

  2. Mix two heaping teaspoonfuls of the flour with a little cold water and stir into the boiling water.

  3. Let it boil for twenty minutes.

  4. Add a little cream to it and salt.

Make the yeast milk

  1. Dissolve a third of a cake of compressed yeast in a little tepid water.

  2. Take a quart of milk, fresh from the cow or warmed to blood heat, and add to it a tablespoonful of sugar and the dissolved yeast.

  3. Put the mixture immediately in beer bottles with patent stoppers, filling to the neck.

  4. Let them stand for twelve hours at a temperature of 68 or 70 degrees.

  5. Stand the bottles upside down on ice until wanted.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

653Calories
21 gProtein
9 gFat
120 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Henrietta Latham Dwight. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and supplies the sugars and proteins the yeast works on.
Compressed yeast (in the method)
Ferments the sugar in the milk, producing carbonation and a lightly sour, lively flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during the standing period and adds sweetness.
Flour
Cooked into the boiled water, it thickens the gruel and gives it body.

The step that matters

Filling the bottles to the neck with the yeast milk and standing them at 68 to 70 degrees. Yeast needs a steady warm temperature to ferment, and sealed bottles trap the carbon dioxide produced, so the mixture carbonates. Overfilling leaves no room for gas and can burst the bottles, while cold slows fermentation too much.

“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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