Reference
Has anyone eaten it in the last ten years?
Eww. I initially thought you meant eating grubs.
I’m not sure which is worse…
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but aren’t hot cereals like cream of wheat, cream of rice, oatmeal, grits, Malt-O-Meal, Hot Ralston, etc, basically gruels? If so, I eat gruel daily. If they’re not gruels, why not…I mean, why don’t they fit the Wikipedia definition:
Gruel is sort of a ambiguous word. I know of it primarily in its historical context as being something that people had set on their fire continuously, adding meat, vegetables, and (probably) some form of cereal as they needed it.
I have a feeling like there’s a saying related to this, that the stuff on the bottom of the cauldron tends to be the oldest and burnt. But all I can think of is “scraping the bottom of the barrel” which is probably a liquor reference.
- All information in this post is from a memory of something a history teacher said in high school, a decade ago. No cites available.
I frequently enjoy oatmeal, Red River and Cream of Wheat.
I love oatmeal! Just had a bowl, as a matter of fact. Quaker Old-Fashioned, not the quick-cooking variety.
I think gruel is the same thing but with more water, and probably no milk and sugar. Makes sense, when your orphanage is on a budget.
I think the difference is that flour is not the same as whole grain preparations.
In Namibia, the schoolkids eat it as the main meal. They call it “pap,” though.
A soggy bowl of breakfast cereal is pretty indistinguishable from cold gruel; it’s just that folks back in the day didn’t have packaged breakfast cereal. Similar for quick-cooking oats (and the aforementioned Cream of Wheat/Rice).
That being said, gruel is still around. I had soupy grits for breakfast the other day, for example. I’ve also had old-school boiled rye gruel a few times when I’ve visited my parents (my dad is from Scandinavia and likes it; I think it’s nasty). Go to some Indian restaurants and you can get haleem, and congee isn’t too different.
Correction: My dad informs me that it’s barley, not rye.
Gruel is really one step BELOW cream of wheat or cream of rice or oatmeal.
Take some flour put it in a bowl and add water. That is gruel. Take rice flour thrwo it in a bowl and add water. That is gruel. It’s very thin and drinkable.
The term changes somewhat but traditinally that is gruel. You’re not talking milk or sugar or any flavour, it’s really just about getting starches into poor hungry people so they have enough energy to work.
You can actually make variations that don’t taste like wallpaper paste. For instance add rice milk or soy milk to flour instead of water.
Of course that drives up the price and defeats the purpose of gruel
Those are porridges, at least when prepared and consumed according to directions on the package. Use a larger proportion of water so that the end result is thin enough to drink, and you have gruel.
Note the second definition for gruel: “Severe punishment.” Ungrateful orphans…
So it’s made from flour – not whole grains? What’s the nutritional difference? Why didn’t they use the whole grain so they’d have something to chew on? Was it that much cheaper to use flour? Would they still use flour if they grew the grain themselves?
Salt pork used to be packed in a barrel, in salt. Scraping the bottom of the barrel means that you’ve used up all the bigger pieces of pork and are now trying to find those crumb-sized bits that might make up another meal or two.
No, gruel* would typically be made with oats, boiled until soft. Cornmeal was another common ingredient. As stated above, the defining characteristics are that it is made with some kind of cereal or grain, boiled in water or milk, and has a thin consistency.
- Someone, somewhere, may have made something called gruel by the “Take some flour put it in a bowl and add water” method, but that certainly isn’t what the word ever commonly meant.
I think I get it now. I actually don’t make it according to the directions; I hate it when oatmeal and the like are that thick. I make it soupy, although I don’t drink it, I still eat it with a spoon. Maybe it’s a gruel-like porridge, eh? I don’t think those ungrateful orphans had brown sugar in theirs, though.
OK, my father was a Southerner, and hence prone to po-mouthing on occasion. He grew up in an Appalachian farm family. One day I observed that with all that corn they grew they must have eaten a lot of grits. He said, “No, grits were for rich kids. We had to eat mush. We envied the ones who could afford to eat grits.”
I thought he was kidding, but there are still a lot of recipes for cornmeal mush online. Sounds like it might be OK if you add butter, salt and pepper. I’ll have to try it sometime. But I’m in no hurry, I really like grits and they’re cheap and plentiful as it is. I guess I’m just a rich kid. 
[yankee]So what’s the difference between grits and mush?[/yankee]
Mush is just cornmeal and water, like most forms of gruel. Grits are corn ground to a certain consistency so that they’ll have that “gritty” texture.
Please, sir, may I have more?