thin cloudy drink to a thicker porridge-like food. Horchata is a chilled sweetened drink of similar nature to thin atole. It is made from ground nutmeats or seeds, grains (often rice) and seasonings such as vanilla and cinnamon, served over ice. Rice gruels eaten throughout Asia are normally referred to in English as porridge as opposed to gruel. Common forms include congee, from the Tamil word for the food and most common in China, Japanese okayu, Korean dak juk, and Vietnamese cháo. Asian porridges/gruels are typically savory, with meat or vegetables added and stock sometimes used as the liquid cooking element. Etymology The Oxford English Dictionary gives an etymology of Middle English from the same word in Old French, both of them deriving from a source in Late Latin: , a diminutive, as the form of the word demonstrates, possibly from an Old Frankish , surmised on the basis of a modern cognate grout. In modern Dutch, the plural word "grutten" still refers to de-husked, coarse ground grain and a traditional dish based on pearlbarley and blackberry is called watergruwel. The Old Norse word , 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 mill. In fiction In the English-speaking world, gruel is remembered as the food of the child workhouse inmates in Charles Dickens's Industrial Revolution novel Oliver Twist (1838); the workhouse was supplied with "an unlimited supply of water" and "small quantities of oatmeal". When Oliver asks the master of the workhouse for some more, he is struck a blow on the head for doing so. The "small saucepan of gruel" waiting upon Ebenezer Scrooge's hob in Dickens's 1843 novel A Christmas Carol emphasizes how miserly Scrooge is. Gruel is also Mr. Woodhouse's preferred and offered dish in Jane Austen's Emma (1816) often to comic or sympathetic effect. References to gruel in popular culture today continue to refer to miserly or starvation conditions, such as Gemma Collins in Celebrity Big Brother 17 (2016), who was denied food for gruel. References External links Ask Mr Breakfast — What is gruel and did orphans really eat it? Titanic Food Menu Porridges Staple foods Ancient dishes Peasant food