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Corn Meal Gruel

A simple gruel made by boiling corn meal in water, seasoned with salt and optionally nutmeg and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Corn Meal Gruel

Why it works: Corn and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Corn Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wet the corn meal with cold water.

  2. Add the wet corn meal to the boiling water.

  3. Stir in a little salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 25 minutes.

  2. Serve plain or with nutmeg and sweet cream for a change.

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. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the thickened body of the gruel as its starch swells in boiling water.
Boiling water
Hydrates the corn meal and carries the heat that gelatinizes its starch.

The step that matters

Wetting the corn meal before adding it to the boiling water. Corn meal added dry to hot water clumps on contact, because the outside of each particle gelatinizes and seals off the inside. Mixing it smooth with cold water first lets it disperse evenly so the gruel cooks without lumps.

“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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