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Molded Farina
For each ½ pint of milk allow I large tablespoonful of farina, a pinch of salt, 1 tablespoonful of sugar and 1 teaspoonful of flavoring. Scald the milk in a double boiler; add the farina and stir until it has thickened nicely, then add salt and sugar, cover and cook half an hour.
Take off and add flavoring. Pour into cups or molds which have been rinsed in cold water.
When very cold turn out and serve with cream and sugar.
Blackberry Mush, No. I To each quart of washed berries add 1/2 cupful of water, stew until soft and rub through a sieve.
Measure and to each quart add 1 scant cupful of farina and ¼ of a teaspoonful of salt and cook in a double boiler for forty-five minutes, stirring frequently until smoothly thickened. Pour into a whetted mold and serve very cold with sugar and cream.
Blackberry Mush, No. 2 Stir 2 quarts of blackberries into 11½ pints of water, heating slowly to boiling point. Then mix in gradually enough graham or entire wheat meal to thicken, being careful not to put too much in, as it will then be full of lumps. Stir in also 1 cupful of white flour, which has been moistened and made smooth in a little cold water. Cover and set where it will continue to cook without scorching, and let it remain ten minutes, stirring once or twice. Then set it back on the stove, where it will not cook for a few minutes. Pour into a mold and set away to cool. Serve with cream and sugar.
A plain milk pudding set in molds, of the kind that filled out cheap suppers before gelatin desserts were common. The proportions are given per half pint of milk, so scale as needed.
- What farina isFarina is finely milled wheat middlings, sold today as Cream of Wheat or as unflavored breakfast wheat cereal. Do not substitute semolina pasta flour, which is coarser and will not set as smoothly.
- ProportionsOne large tablespoon of farina to half a pint (1 cup) of milk is a lean ratio by modern standards and will give at best a soft set, though the recipe does expect it to turn out once thoroughly chilled. For a cleaner turn-out, go to a rounded tablespoon and a half.
- The hingeAdd the farina to milk that is already scalding, in a thin stream, stirring the whole time. Dumped in cold or all at once it lumps immediately and no amount of later beating recovers it.
- Sugar after thickeningThe order is deliberate: salt and sugar go in once the grain has swelled. Sugar added at the start slows hydration and gives a thinner, grainier pudding.
- Half an hour is not paddingThe long covered cook in the double boiler is what removes the raw-cereal taste and makes the texture creamy. Ten minutes gives a pudding that tastes of flour paste.
- FlavoringA teaspoon of vanilla, almond or lemon extract per cup of milk is generous by modern taste; half that is plenty. It goes in off the heat so the volatile flavor is not driven off.
- Rinsed molds"Rinsed in cold water" and "whetted" both mean wetted and not dried; the film of water lets the set pudding slide out. Chill at least four hours, and preferably overnight.
- YieldHalf a pint of milk fills two small custard cups.
Molded farina belongs to a large family of thickened-milk puddings — blancmange, cornstarch mold, rice mold — that filled the dessert pages of economy cookbooks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They cost almost nothing and used no eggs. Farina in particular was recommended for invalids and children, being bland, soft and easy to digest.