Skip to main content
Main

Cracker Gruel

A simple gruel made by blending powdered crackers with boiling water and hot milk, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cracker Gruel

Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cracker Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crackers

  1. Brown fresh crackers in the oven until light brown.

  2. Roll the browned crackers very fine.

Make the gruel

  1. In a pot, combine the powdered crackers, boiling water, hot milk, and salt.

  2. Stir well and let it boil for one minute.

  3. Add a little sugar and flavoring if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Crackers
Provide the main body and toasty, wheat flavor as the base of the gruel.
Milk
Adds richness, creaminess, and softness to the thickened gruel.
Boiling water
Hydrates the powdered crackers so their starch thickens into a smooth gruel.

The step that matters

Stir well and let it boil for one minute. Powdered crackers can clump when added to liquid, so stirring disperses them evenly. A full minute at a boil gives the starch time to swell and thicken the gruel.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes