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Blackberry Farina
Wash, stew and mash a quart of berries (with two tablespoons water) then add one teacup farina, a pinch of salt, and cook fifty minutes in double boiler. Place in wet moulds to harden. For breakfast slice and serve with cream.
A stiff cooked pudding meant to be turned out, sliced cold and eaten at breakfast. The whole thing rests on the ratio of cereal to fruit purée, so measure the farina rather than eyeballing it.
- The hinge: it must set firm enough to sliceFifty minutes in a double boiler is not overcooking; it is what fully hydrates the semolina so the mould holds a clean edge. Undercooked farina slumps when unmoulded, and no amount of chilling will rescue it.
- What farina isMilled hard wheat endosperm, generally finer than semolina, sold today as Cream of Wheat. Use the regular kind, not instant or quick-cooking, which is partly pre-cooked and will thicken far too fast and taste pasty.
- A teacupIn turn-of-the-century American books a teacup is usually reckoned at about 6 fl oz, roughly three-quarters of a modern measuring cup, though the term was used loosely. Against a quart of berries that gives a very firm mould; err toward the low side if you want it softer.
- A quart of berriesRoughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb, fresh or frozen. Frozen berries release more liquid, so you can skip the two tablespoons of water.
- SeedsBlackberry seeds are hard and numerous, and nothing in the cooking softens them. If that bothers you, push the stewed fruit through a sieve or food mill before adding the farina; expect to lose some volume to the seeds.
- SweeteningThe original adds none, which suits a breakfast dish served with cream. If your berries are tart, 2 to 4 tablespoons of sugar stirred in with the farina is in keeping, though much more will soften the set.
- Wet mouldsRinsing the mould in cold water and leaving it wet is what lets the pudding release. Small loaf pans or ramekins work; chill at least four hours, and ideally overnight, before slicing.
- YieldServes four to six as a breakfast dish. It keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator and slices better on the second day.
Cooked-cereal moulds like this were a standing feature of American and British breakfast tables in the late nineteenth century, when farina, semolina, hominy and cornmeal were all boiled thick, set in a wetted mould, then sliced cold or fried in butter the next morning. The appeal was thrift and forethought: one pot cooked the evening before fed a household at daybreak with no further work, and a quart of berries stretched a cheap cereal into something worth serving with cream. Farina was widely regarded as a delicate, easily digested food, which is why it turns up so often in recipes aimed at children and convalescents. A dish of this kind reflects a fruit-preserving logic that has largely disappeared: a heavy blackberry crop got used up in puddings, moulds and vinegars as much as in jam.