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Oatmeal Gruel
Mix a table-spoonful of oatmeal very smoothly with a little cold water. Pour upon it a pint of boiling water, stir it well, then let it stand for a few minutes to settle. Pour it back very gently into the saucepan, so as to leave undisturbed the sediment at the bottom of the gruel. Let it simmer, stirring occasionally and skimming it carefully. It may be sweetened and flavoured with wine and spice, or be mixed with a little beer and grated ginger, or, if preferred, a little salt only may be put in. Dry toast or biscuits may be served with it. Time, a quarter of an hour to simmer. Probable cost, 1d. Sufficient for one person.
A single-serving invalid's gruel, thinner than porridge and meant to be drunk as much as eaten. The technique hinges on the settling step, which is what separates gruel from thin oatmeal.
- The hinge: decantingLetting the mixture stand and then pouring off the liquid leaves the coarse bran and grit behind. Skip it and you get watery porridge rather than the smooth, slightly silky drink intended.
- Which oatmealThis means dry, uncooked oatmeal — in a British book of this date, medium or fine ground oats, not rolled oats. Fine oatmeal or pinhead oats ground briefly in a blender give the closest result; rolled oats will not release starch the same way.
- ProportionsOne tablespoon to a pint (20 fl oz British, about 2 1/2 cups) is very thin by modern taste. Two tablespoons gives something closer to a light, drinkable soup.
- Simmering timeA quarter of an hour is right, not excessive — the starch needs time to swell and lose its raw taste. Stir often; gruel catches and scorches at the base of the pan quickly at this dilution.
- SkimmingLift the scum off with a spoon as it forms rather than stirring it back in.
- The flavouringsWine and spice, or beer and ginger, were common sickroom additions. The recipe does not say at what point they go in. Salt alone is the plainest version and the one most likely to suit a modern palate.
- Cost and yield1d. was a penny in pre-decimal currency, quoted to show how cheap the dish was. It makes one large cup or mug.
Gruel belongs to the sickroom rather than the dinner table. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was the standard food for invalids, nursing mothers, the very old and the very young — cheap, bland, easily swallowed, and thought to be restorative in a period when digestion was believed to be weakened by illness. The wine-and-spice and beer-and-ginger variations here reflect the older idea that a warm, mildly alcoholic drink was strengthening. Oatmeal was the obvious base in much of Britain because it thickens water without the fat or richness thought unsuitable for the sick. The dish is best known now through its literary reputation for meanness, most famously in the workhouse of Oliver Twist, though Cassell's is describing something quite different: a small, carefully made portion for one, seasoned to taste and served with toast.