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Water Gruel

A simple porridge made by boiling water with oat or corn meal, then seasoning with salt and sugar.

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

Why it works: Corn and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Water Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water in a pot.

  2. Add the oat or corn meal and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture into a bowl.

  4. Add salt and sugar to taste, 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. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oat or corn meal
Thickens the water into a light gruel as its starch cooks and swells.

“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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