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Indian Meal Gruel

A simple gruel made by boiling water with flour and Indian meal, seasoned with salt, optionally sweetened with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Indian Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stir the flour and Indian meal mixed with a little cold water into the boiling water.

  2. Boil for thirty minutes.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Strain.

  5. Add sugar and cream 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.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Thickens the liquid into a gruel and gives it body and a grainy texture.
Flour
Adds additional thickening so the gruel becomes smooth and cohesive as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and meal into the boiling water. Starch clumps if dry flour or meal is dropped into hot liquid. Mixing them first with a little cold water lets the starch disperse evenly, so the gruel thickens smoothly.

“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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