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Gruel, Barley
Wash a quarter of a pound of pearl barley in two or three waters. Put it into a saucepan with four pints of water, and half an inch of stick cinnamon. Simmer gently, until the liquid is reduced one-half; then strain, and return it to the saucepan, with two large lumps of sugar, and two wine-glassfuls of port. Keep it in a cool place, and heat it as required. Time, about an hour and a half. Probable cost, 3d., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for two pints and a half of gruel.
GRUEL, BARLEY (another way). (See BARLEY GRUEL.)
This is invalid cookery — a thin barley decoction served warm to convalescents — and it works exactly as written, provided the measures are read as British imperial.
- The barley and the waterA quarter pound of pearl barley is 4 oz, a generous half cup. Four imperial pints is 80 fl oz, roughly 2.3 litres.
- Wine-glassfulsA Victorian wine glass held about 2 fl oz, so two glassfuls is roughly half a cup of port. Two large lumps of sugar amount to a couple of teaspoons or so.
- Reduce by half, and no fasterThe whole texture depends on a bare simmer for the full hour and a half so the starch leaches out gradually. A hard boil drives off the water before the barley has given anything up, and the strained liquid comes out watery.
- Strain while hotPour through a fine sieve or muslin as soon as it comes off the heat. Once it cools the liquid thickens and clings to the grain, and you lose a good deal of it.
- Add the port off the heatThe wine goes in after straining, into liquid that is no longer boiling, and the mixture is then reheated only as needed. Simmering the port would cook off both the alcohol and the fruit that is the point of it.
- CinnamonHalf an inch of stick cinnamon is a whisper of flavour, not a spiced drink. Ground cinnamon is a poor substitute here — it clouds the liquid and will not strain out.
- Yield and keepingAbout 2 1/2 imperial pints, or a little under 1.5 litres — several servings, meant to be kept and reheated by the cupful. Refrigerate rather than keeping it "in a cool place," and use within two or three days; it may thicken as it cools and loosen again on warming.
- The strained barleyThe spent grain is bland but not spoiled. It can go into a soup or a milk pudding rather than the bin.
Barley gruel belongs to the sickroom rather than the dinner table, and Cassell's includes it among the invalid drinks — barley water, arrowroot, beef tea, whey — that a Victorian household was expected to produce at short notice on a doctor's word. The technique is very old: a strained grain decoction of this kind is the ptisan of Greek and Roman medicine, recommended for fevers and carried forward almost unchanged through centuries of European domestic manuals. Pearl barley, the grain scoured of its hull and bran, was cheap and kept indefinitely; the book costs the preparation at threepence. The port is the interesting part: fortified wine was widely regarded in the nineteenth century as strengthening for the sick and was routinely added to nourishing drinks, though the price given here excludes it. The cross-reference at the end, sending the reader to BARLEY GRUEL, reflects the dictionary format of the book, where the same preparation is indexed under more than one heading.