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Nut Gruel. No. 1

A simple nut gruel made by mixing flour, water, and boiling water, then adding almond butter paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nut Gruel. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gruel

  1. Mix the mixed flour with cold water.

  2. Add boiling water, salt, and sugar if desired.

  3. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir almond butter with 1 to 2 tablespoons of water to make a smooth paste.

  2. Gradually add the gruel to the paste, mix well, 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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Mixed flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the gruel body.
Almond butter
Adds richness and nutty flavor, and fat that softens the texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the gruel to the paste. Adding hot gruel slowly to the smooth paste, while mixing, helps the nut butter blend evenly. Adding it all at once can leave lumps.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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