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Cranberry Gruel

A simple hot cereal made from flour, water, cranberries, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cranberry Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gruel

  1. Mix the flour gradually with ¼ cup cold water.

  2. Stir the mixture into 1 cup boiling salted water.

  3. Cook directly over heat for 15 minutes.

  4. Then cook over boiling water for 30 minutes.

Add fruit and serve

  1. Add the cranberries and cook for 10 minutes or until soft.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until it dissolves.

  3. Press through a strainer and serve.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the water into a smooth, pourable gruel as it cooks.
Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and colour, and soften into the gruel as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the gruel and balances the tartness of the cranberries.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with cold water before adding it to boiling water. Starch granules clump when dropped into hot liquid unless they are first dispersed in cold water. Starting with a smooth slurry lets the flour thicken evenly without lumps.

“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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