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Oat Meal Gruel

A simple porridge made by simmering oatmeal in water and milk, seasoned with salt and nutmeg, optionally sweetened with raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Oat Meal Gruel

Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Oat Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of oatmeal to 1 pint of boiling water.

  2. Stir in ½ pint of milk and ¼ teaspoon of salt, then simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Sweeten and flavor with nutmeg.

  5. Add raisins 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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal (in the method)
Thickens the liquid into a gruel as its starch gelatinizes during simmering.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, rounding out the flavor of the gruel.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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