Home › The Breakfast Food › As a Breakfast Cereal
As a Breakfast Cereal
To 1 cup of the cereal add 4 cups of cold water and 1 level teaspoon of salt.
Cook over rather slow fire, stir to keep from settling. If this is found thicker than desired, add cold water. Boil about 20 minutes. Or, it is at its best as a delicate nourishing breakfast dish, made in double boiler over night, simply bringing to boiling point and warming when required.
A plain 1:4 grain-to-water porridge from the milling company's own promotional book, written for a coal range where a pot could sit at low heat unattended. The whole method hinges on keeping the heat low and stirring early, before the grain settles and scorches on the bottom.
- What "the cereal" isThe page assumes a product the reader already has to hand, most likely a coarse cracked or granulated grain breakfast food. Cracked wheat, bulgur-style coarse wheat, or steel-cut oats all behave the same way at this ratio; rolled oats will not, as they absorb water much faster and want closer to 1:2.
- "Rather slow fire"On a gas or electric burner this is low, with the surface barely trembling. High heat drives off water at the rim faster than the grain can absorb it and gives you a scorched layer under a soupy top.
- Stirring and settlingStir well in the first two or three minutes, when the grain is still heavy enough to sink. Once it has begun to thicken and suspend itself, occasional stirring is enough.
- The 20 minutesTwenty minutes suits cracked wheat and steel-cut oats. Very coarse grain needs 30 to 40 minutes, and whole grain longer still; taste for a grain that is tender through rather than chalky at the centre.
- Thinning with cold waterAdding cold water mid-cook, as directed, is sound here because the mixture is already hydrated. Add it a few tablespoons at a time and let it come back to a simmer before judging the consistency.
- The overnight double boilerThe original presumably relies on a range that stayed warm through the night. Do that in a modern kitchen only if you refrigerate the cooked cereal once it has stopped steaming; cooked grain held for hours at room temperature is a good medium for Bacillus cereus. Reheat to a full boil before serving, as the recipe says.
- SaltOne level teaspoon to a cup of dry grain is broadly in line with usual porridge practice. Reduce to half a teaspoon if you plan to serve it with salted butter.
- YieldOne cup of dry grain gives roughly four cups cooked, or four modest breakfast servings. Serve with milk or cream and brown sugar, maple syrup, or molasses.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to Canadian households by the hundreds of thousands in the early twentieth century, which is why this page reads less like a recipe than like instructions on a package: the book existed partly to teach cooks what to do with the company's own products. Long-cooked cracked wheat and oatmeal porridges were a standard Canadian and northern-American breakfast of the period, and the double-boiler-overnight method was one common way of getting one on the table quickly, since a wood or coal range held usable heat for hours after the fire was banked. The same logic survives today in slow cookers and in overnight steel-cut oats.