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Oatmeal or Indian Meal Gruel

A simple gruel made by cooking oatmeal or Indian meal in boiling water with salt and optional sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Oatmeal or Indian Meal Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the oatmeal or Indian meal smoothly in cold water.

  2. Stir it into 1 pint of boiling water.

  3. Add the coarse sea salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil slowly for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Sweeten to taste 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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal or indian meal
Thickens the water into a gruel as its starch swells and gelatinises during long simmering.

The step that matters

Mixing the meal smoothly into cold water first. Starch clumps when it hits hot liquid directly, forming lumps that do not smooth out. Suspending it in cold water first lets the grains disperse evenly before they are heated and thicken the gruel.

“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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