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Corn Meal Gruel

A simple gruel made by mixing sifted cornmeal with boiling water, simmered until thickened, served with cream and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Corn Meal Gruel

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Corn Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wet the corn meal in cold water.

  2. In a kettle, bring 1 quart of water to a boil.

Make the gruel

  1. Dip a spoonful of the corn meal mixture into the boiling water. Stir.

  2. Continue adding more corn meal mixture until the gruel reaches the desired consistency.

  3. Let it boil for 20 minutes or longer.

  4. Season with salt to taste.

Serve

  1. For serving, add cream and a little sugar 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Thickens the water into a gruel as its starch swells when cooked in boiling liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the corn meal to boiling water. Dropping the wet corn meal into boiling water in small spoonfuls, stirring between additions, helps the starch disperse evenly. Adding it all at once can form lumps that stay dry inside.

“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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