Skip to main content
Main

Lentil Flour Gruel

A simple gruel made by cooking lentil flour with liquid, sweetened or savory, optionally enriched with butter.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lentil Flour Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gruel

  1. In a pot, combine lentil flour and water or milk.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

Finish

  1. Add sugar and flavoring to taste.

  2. If desired, stir in a little butter off the heat.

Variations

  1. For a savory version, use stock instead of water or milk.

  2. To make a pudding, cool the gruel, mix with an egg, and bake.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Lentil flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, spoonable gruel as it heats.
Water or milk
Liquid that hydrates the flour so its starch can swell and set the texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the earthy flavor of the lentils.

The step that matters

Stirring while the gruel cooks until thickened. Lentil starch swells and sets as it heats in liquid. Constant stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pot.

“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