Skip to main content
Main

Gruel

A thin porridge made from groats or oatmeal boiled in milk or water, sweetened or salted, optionally flavored with brandy or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Gruel

Why it works: Milk and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gruel

  1. Blend the patent groats in a basin with a little cold milk.

  2. Pour on half a pint of boiling milk or water.

  3. Return to the saucepan and boil for ten minutes, stirring well with a wooden spoon.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar or salt according to taste.

  2. Add brandy or sherry 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. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Patent groats or fine oatmeal
Starch from the oats thickens the liquid into a smooth, porridge-like gruel as it cooks.
Milk or water
Liquid that cooks the oats and becomes the body of the gruel, adding moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Boiling for ten minutes while stirring well. Oat starch swells and thickens as it heats in liquid. Stirring keeps the oats from settling, sticking and scorching on the base of the pan, and helps break up lumps so the gruel stays smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes