Name: Hard-bread Gruel
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons powdered hard-bread; 1 pint boiling water; ½ teaspoon salt

Hard-bread Gruel

Ingredients

4 tablespoons powdered hard-bread
1 pint boiling water
½ teaspoon salt

Directions

In a bowl, combine the powdered hard-bread and salt.
Pour the boiling water over the mixture.
Stir well until the hard-bread is fully dissolved.

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered hard-bread: Provides the body and starch that thicken the gruel as it softens in hot water.
Boiling water: Hydrates and softens the bread, turning it into a thick, spoonable liquid.

“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.