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Vermicelli Porridge
Boil one quart of milk, then shake in two and a half ounces of vermicelli, stirring well till mixed; let it cook slowly for half an hour, stirring frequently; add a pinch of salt, and serve in the same way as oatmeal porridge, with cream and castor sugar.
A milk-simmered pasta porridge of the kind served for nursery breakfasts and invalid suppers. It works, but the milk needs watching more than the recipe admits.
- Scorching is the hingeHalf an hour of milk over direct heat will catch on the base long before the vermicelli softens. Use a heavy pan on the lowest possible flame, or set the pan in a wider pan of simmering water, and stir down to the bottom regularly rather than just across the surface.
- QuantitiesOne quart in a British book is the imperial quart, about 40 fl oz or 1.14 litres; 2 1/2 oz of vermicelli is roughly 70 g. That should give about four small breakfast servings, or two generous ones.
- The vermicelli meant hereVictorian vermicelli was commonly sold in fine coils or nests, and the instruction to 'shake in' suggests short lengths rather than long strands; fideos or angel hair snapped into short pieces is a reasonable modern stand-in. Break it small so it disperses when shaken in.
- Cooking timeFine pasta in milk is tender in 8 to 12 minutes. The half hour is there to thicken the milk and let the starch swell into something porridge-like, so judge by consistency rather than the clock, and add a splash more milk if it stiffens too far.
- Castor sugarCaster sugar, that is, superfine granulated. Ordinary granulated works; it simply takes a moment longer to dissolve on the surface.
- Salt timingSalt goes in at the end here, but a pinch added at the start seasons the milk more evenly and does the starch no harm.
- Serving'In the same way as oatmeal porridge' points to a bowl with cream poured over and sugar sprinkled or handed at table rather than stirred through; the exact ritual is not spelled out. Nutmeg would not be out of period, but the recipe does not call for it.
Vermicelli reached British kitchens in the eighteenth century as an imported Italian dried pasta, and for a long time it was treated less as pasta than as a thickening for soups and milk puddings, which is why it turns up in the porridge and gruel pages of Victorian cookery books rather than among savoury dishes. It belongs to the simple milk preparations of the sort recommended for children, the elderly and convalescents, a familiar category of nineteenth-century domestic cooking: bland, warm, easily digested, and cheap enough to make from a quart of milk and a handful of dry goods from the store cupboard. The instruction to serve it "in the same way as oatmeal porridge" tells you the household already knew that ritual by heart, cream on top and the sugar bowl passed round.