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Cranberry Gruel

A simple gruel made with flour, water, salt, cranberries, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cranberry Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blend flour with cold water.

  2. Add to boiling salted water.

  3. Cook over boiling water for 30 minutes.

  4. Pick over and wash cranberries.

  5. Add cranberries to flour mixture.

  6. Cook until very soft.

Finish and serve

  1. Add sugar.

  2. Press gruel through a sieve.

  3. Reheat.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, light gruel.
Cranberries
Provide the tart flavour and colour, and soften into the gruel as they cook.
Sugar
Balances the tartness of the cranberries with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook until very soft. Cranberries must break down fully so the gruel is smooth once pressed through a sieve. Undercooked skins and pulp will stay grainy and separate from the liquid.

“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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