Peptonised Milk Gruel
Ingredients
Directions
Make the mixture
Make a thick gruel from any desired farinaceous food.
To ½ pint of boiling hot gruel, add ½ pint of cold milk.
Stir in the Benger’s liquor pancreaticus and a pinch of bicarbonate of soda.
Keep warm and serve
Cover and keep warm for 30 minutes.
Boil for a few minutes, strain, and serve the gruel.
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
- Thick gruel
- Forms the thick, starchy base that the other ingredients are mixed into.
- Fresh milk
- Adds moisture, richness and milk proteins, making the gruel softer and more nourishing.
- Benger’s liquor pancreaticus
- Pancreatic enzymes partly break down proteins into softer, more digestible peptones.
The step that matters
Keeping the mixture warm without boiling it during the 30 minutes. The enzymes need gentle warmth to keep working on the proteins, but high heat destroys enzymes. Letting the mixture boil during this rest would stop the peptonising before the gruel is served.
“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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