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Brandy Gruel
1231. Boil the rind of half a lemon thinly pared, and four large lumps of sugar in a quarter of a pint of fresh milk; then mix one aessert spoonful of fine oatmeal and a salt spoonful of salt in four table spoonfuls of cold milk till quite smooth, and pour it into the boiling milk. Stir without ceasing, and allow it to boil for full five minutes. Put it into a basin, and add to it a piece of butter about the size of a common nut, and one wine-glass and a half of brandy.
A sickroom drink rather than a breakfast porridge: thin, sweet, lemon-scented and heavily fortified. The measures are mid-Victorian and small, so read them before scaling.
- The measuresA quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz (about 2/3 cup) of milk; the four tablespoons of cold milk for slaking are extra. A dessertspoonful is 2 teaspoons, a saltspoonful about 1/4 teaspoon, and the four "large lumps" of sugar amount to roughly 4 teaspoons.
- The wine-glassA Victorian wine-glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a glass and a half is some 3 fl oz of brandy against roughly 7 fl oz of milk all told. That is a very strong measure by any modern standard and the obvious thing to reduce.
- Fine oatmeal, not oatsFine or superfine oatmeal is ground meal, not rolled oats. Rolled oats will not disperse into a smooth liquid gruel; use fine oatmeal, or pinhead oatmeal blitzed to a powder.
- The hinge: slake it coldMixing the meal smooth in cold milk before it meets the boiling milk is what keeps the gruel lump-free. Add it in a thin stream, stirring hard, and keep stirring throughout the five minutes or the meal will catch on the pan base.
- Boil the full five minutesOatmeal thickens quickly but tastes raw and chalky if pulled early. Five minutes at a bare boil is the minimum for the starch to cook out.
- Lemon rindPare it in wide strips with no white pith. The recipe does not say to take it out, but it is worth fishing out before the gruel goes into the basin unless you want the drink to turn bitter as it stands.
- Adding the brandyBoth butter and brandy go in off the heat, in the basin, so the spirit is not driven off. Stir until the butter melts and drink warm.
- YieldOne tumbler or breakfast cup, intended as a single dose.
Gruel was a standard invalid food of the nineteenth-century British household. Thin oatmeal in milk was considered easy on a weak stomach; the brandy, sugar and lemon peel turned it into something between a nourishment and a nightcap, in the same family as the milk punches and posset drinks taken against a chill. The recipe reflects a period habit that survived into the twentieth century, when spirits were widely regarded as restorative rather than merely intoxicating and were given freely in the sickroom. The very small quantity is a clue to its purpose: one serving for one patient, not a dish for the table.