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Cape Cod Porridge
1 cup raisins 1 qt. milk 1 teaspoon sugar 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1 tablespoon flour salt Boil raisins till tender. Heat milk and add to raisins without draining them. Add sugar, nutmeg and salt. Barely bring to a scalding point, but do not boil. Pour a generous portion of this over any cooked cereal and serve very hot.
A milk-and-raisin sauce meant to be ladled over hot cereal rather than eaten alone. The whole thing hinges on keeping the milk below a boil.
- Scalding point, not boilingScalding means about 180F, when the surface trembles and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge of the pan. Past that the milk catches on the bottom and the raisin sugars scorch, which gives the porridge a burnt edge that will not cook out.
- Boiling the raisinsCover them with water by an inch and simmer 10 to 15 minutes until plump and yielding. The instruction to add the milk "without draining them" keeps the dark cooking liquid, which carries some of the sweetness and colour.
- The flourFlour is listed among the ingredients but never appears in the method. If you want it, slake the tablespoon in a little cold milk before it goes in; stirred in dry it will lump, and it will not thicken much at scalding temperature in any case.
- SweetnessOne teaspoon of sugar in a quart of milk is almost nothing; the raisins are doing the work. Taste before serving and add more only if the raisins were dry and lean.
- NutmegGrate it fresh if you can. Pre-ground nutmeg from a jar is flat by comparison, and a quarter teaspoon of it will read as dusty rather than warm.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk makes enough for six to eight bowls of oatmeal, cornmeal mush or cracked wheat. Serve it from a warmed pitcher, since it cools fast in a cold jug and the recipe insists on very hot.
- Milk choiceThe recipe says only "milk," which in this period would ordinarily have meant whole, unhomogenised milk. Skim scalds just as well but the result is thinner.