Oat Jelly
1 cup Rolled Oats 1/2 teaspoon salt 3 cups boiling water Add the oats and salt to boiling water gradually. Boil two minutes, then steam in a double boiler forty-five minutes to one hour.
A plain long-cooked oatmeal, cooked wet enough and long enough that it sets into a sliceable jelly when cold. The name describes the finished texture, not an added gelatine.
- The ratio is the pointThree cups water to one cup oats is about half again more water than the usual 2:1 porridge ratio. Do not reduce it, or you get thick oatmeal rather than something that will set.
- Rolled oats, not instantOld-style rolled oats or thick-cut flakes hold up to an hour of steaming. Quick or instant oats break down into paste in minutes and will not give the same clean set.
- "Steam in a double boiler"Set the pan of oats over simmering water, covered, and keep the lower water topped up. Indirect heat is what allows 45-60 minutes without scorching or constant stirring.
- Add graduallySprinkling the oats into boiling water in a slow stream keeps them from clumping. Whisk as you go for the first minute.
- Modern shortcutA covered heavy saucepan on the lowest burner setting does much the same job as the double boiler if you stir occasionally.
- To get the jellyThe recipe gives no moulding step; the name implies the hot cereal was poured into a wetted mould or loaf pan and chilled several hours, then turned out and sliced to be eaten cold or fried.
- YieldAbout three cups cooked, serving three to four as a breakfast cereal.
Long-cooked oats moulded and sliced cold were a standard trick in late nineteenth and early twentieth century cookery, when fuel-saving double boilers and "cereal cookers" were fixtures of the American kitchen and oatmeal was routinely simmered for an hour or more rather than the few minutes we allow it now. Setting the cereal in a mould turned one morning's cooking into two meals: hot porridge the first day, cold sliced jelly or fried slices the next, in the same spirit as fried cornmeal mush. "Jelly" here is probably used in the older, broader sense of any preparation that sets firm on cooling.