Water Gruel

A sickroom gruel of the plainest sort: two ingredients, and the whole of the technique is in the words "by degrees." What survives is a method rather than a formula, so the proportions are worth pinning down.

• The hinge: add the meal slowlyOatmeal shaken into water all at once seizes into lumps that no amount of boiling will smooth. Sprinkle it in a little at a time while stirring the cold water, and only set the pan over heat once the liquid is uniform.
• What "oatmeal" meantIn books of this period oatmeal is a dry ground or cut meal, closer to steel-cut oats or a coarse oat flour than to rolled oats. Rolled oats will work but thicken faster and give a flakier body; a fine oat meal gives the smooth, drinkable result intended.
• QuantitiesA pint is 2 cups (16 fl oz) in American measure, 20 fl oz if the book is following British usage. A large spoonful is roughly a tablespoon, which makes this very thin indeed — gruel was meant to be sipped, not eaten with a spoon.
• Cooking timeBring it to a bare boil and hold it at a simmer, stirring, for 20 to 30 minutes with steel-cut meal, or about 10 with rolled oats. Undercooked oat meal tastes raw and chalky.
• Seasoning is left to youNo salt is specified, as invalid diets were often deliberately bland. A small pinch of salt added at the start, and sugar, a spoonful of cream or a strip of lemon peel at the end, transform it without straying from period practice.
• StrainingSome nineteenth-century sickroom recipes direct that gruel be poured through a sieve before serving so that no husk or lump reached the patient. Worth doing if it is going to someone with little appetite.
• YieldOne serving, about a cup and a half after evaporation. It thickens considerably as it cools and can be loosened with hot water or milk.