Skip to main content
Breakfast

Oat-Meal Gruel

A simple porridge made from oat-meal, salt, water, raisins, served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Oat-Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix oatmeal with cold water and salt in a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture.

Cook

  1. Transfer to a saucepan and boil slowly for nearly an hour, stirring frequently.

  2. Add raisins and cook until done.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,642 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal (in the method)
Forms the thick body of the porridge as its starch swells and gelatinises in liquid.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture, and plump up as they absorb moisture during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil slowly and stir frequently. Oat starch can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan. A gentle simmer with frequent stirring keeps the porridge smooth and evenly cooked while the starch fully swells.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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.

More oatmeal porridge recipes

Scottish 4Cheese 3Scotch 3 See all 277 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes