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Gruel for Infants

A simple gruel made from goat's milk, boiled egg yolks, boiling water, and a little salt or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gruel for Infants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs until hard.

  2. Remove the yolks and grind them into a fine powder.

Make the gruel

  1. In a bowl, combine the goat's milk and the powdered egg yolks.

  2. Add the boiling water and a little salt or sugar to taste, then mix well.

Serve

  1. Administer using a nursing bottle.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Goat's milk
Forms the liquid base and adds fat, giving the gruel a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Add fat and richness, and their proteins help thicken and bind the mixture.

The step that matters

Mix well after adding the boiling water. Powdered yolk left in clumps will not disperse evenly in the liquid. Thorough mixing gives an even, smooth texture throughout 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.

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