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Corn Meal Gruel

A simple gruel made by boiling water, adding cornmeal slurry, salt, and cooking for 20 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Corn Meal Gruel

Corn Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 3 pints of water to a boil in a pot.

  2. In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of corn meal with a little cold water to form a slurry.

  3. Stir the corn meal mixture into the boiling water.

  4. Add a pinch of salt and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Thickens the water as its starch swells and gelatinizes during cooking.

The step that matters

Make the slurry before adding the corn meal. Corn meal clumps when dropped into hot liquid because its outer starch gelatinizes at once and seals the inside. Mixing it with cold water first spreads the particles so the gruel cooks smooth.

“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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