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Farina Cakes with Jelly
2 cups scalded milk 1/2 cup farina (scant) 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 egg Mix farina, sugar, and salt, add to milk, and cook in double boiler twenty minutes, stirring constantly until mixture has thickened. Add egg slightly beaten, pour into a buttered shallow pan, and brush over with one egg slightly beaten and diluted with one tablespoon milk. Brown in a moderate oven. Cut in squares, and serve with a cube of jelly on each square.
A stovetop semolina pudding, chilled firm in a pan, glazed with egg and browned — closer to a sweet polenta than to a cake. The whole dish depends on cooking the farina long enough to swell fully.
- FarinaFarina is finely milled wheat semolina — Cream of Wheat or any quick-cooking (not instant) semolina cereal works. Do not substitute coarse semolina for pasta, which will not soften in twenty minutes.
- Scant half cup"Scant" means slightly under a level measure — call it about 75 g. Too much farina and the mixture sets stiff and chalky rather than sliceable.
- Double boilerTwenty minutes over simmering water is what keeps the milk from scorching and the grain from catching. A heavy saucepan over low heat works if you stir constantly, but the double boiler is genuinely easier here.
- EggsThe ingredient list names one egg, but the method calls for two: one beaten into the hot cooked farina, a second beaten with a tablespoon of milk for the glaze. Let the mixture cool a minute before adding the first egg so it thickens rather than scrambles.
- Moderate oven350F (175C), 15 to 20 minutes, until the glaze is set and patchily golden. The interior is already cooked; the oven is only browning the top.
- Chill before cuttingThe pan needs to be fully set before it will cut into clean squares; the recipe itself does not call for chilling, but letting it cool and firm up gives sharper edges.
- The jellyA firm cube of currant, quince or apple jelly suits it — something that holds its shape on the square rather than a soft jam that slumps.
- YieldTwo cups of milk fills an 8-inch square pan to about half an inch; that gives roughly 16 small squares, or 4 to 6 servings.
Farina puddings of this kind sit at the point where nineteenth-century cookery treated cereal as a genteel dish rather than plain porridge. Boiled semolina, set firm, sliced and either fried or browned is an old European habit — the same logic as fried cornmeal mush or Italian semolino — and American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s absorbed it as an inexpensive entree or supper sweet. Packaged farina was widely sold by this period, which is why the recipe assumes a fine, uniform grain that cooks in twenty minutes.