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Gruel is a food consisting of some type of cereal—such as ground oats, wheat, rye, or rice—heated or boiled in water or milk. It is a thinner version of porridge that may be more often drunk rather than eaten. Historically, gruel has been a staple food of the Western diet, especially for . Gruel may also be made from millet, hemp, barley, or, in hard times, from chestnut flour or even the less-bitter of some . Gruel has historically been associated with feeding the patientA gruel of cornmeal, soaked and cooking in a double-boiler, was recommended for typhus patients in The American Journal of Nursing 14.4 (January 1914) p. 296. and recently-weaning children.
Gruel is also a colloquial expression for any watery food of unknown character, e.g., pea soup.The word soup is related to sop, the slice of bread which was soaked in broth or thin gruel.Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, Anthea Bell, tr. The History of Food, revised ed. 2009, p. 161. Gruel has often been associated with poverty, with negative associations attached to the term in popular culture, as in the Charles Dickens novels Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol.
Gruel was the staple food of the ancient Greeks, for whom roasted were the extraordinary feast that followed sacrifice, even among heroes, and "in practice, bread was a luxury eaten only in towns". Roman plebeians "ate the staple gruel of classical times, supplemented by oil, the humbler , and salt fish" Toussaint-Samat 2009, p. 93. for gruel could be prepared without access to the in which bread was baked. In the Middle Ages, the peasant could avoid the tithe exacted by paying in grain ground by the miller of the landowner's mill. When eaten by the peasant, the process was to roast the grains to make them digestible and grind small portions in a mortar at home. In lieu of cooking the resulting paste on the hearthstone, it could be simmered in a cauldron with water or, luxuriously, with milk.
In the United Kingdom, it was a common remedy for the sick, relatively nourishing and easy to digest, and a standard component of the evening meal in British hospitals into the early 20th century.
In the Americas, maize gruels were once one of the main food sources for many Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Maya peoples and . Atole is a preparation of ground maize often flavored with chili pepper and salt (for a savory dish), or, in more modern times, with piloncillo and cinnamon (for a sweet dish). It can be consumed as an important calorie source as a thicker meal, or as a liquid drink.
Gruel was on the third-class menu of the Titanic on the eve of her Titanic sinking.
Rice gruels eaten throughout Asia are normally referred to in English as porridge as opposed to gruel. Common forms include congee, from the Tamil language word for the food and most common in chinese cuisine zhou/zuk, japanese cuisine okayu, korean cuisine juk, goto goto, and Vietnamese cháo. Asian porridges/gruels are typically savory, with meat or vegetables added and stock sometimes used as the liquid cooking element.
The Old Norse word grautr, meaning "coarse-ground grain", gives way to the Icelandic grautur, Faroese greytur, Norwegian grøt (nynorsk graut), Danish grød, and the Swedish and Elfdalian gröt, all meaning porridge, of which gruel is a subtype.
The German "Grießmehl", ground grain, and Dutch "griesmeel", are compounded cognates to the English grist and meal.
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