Lentil Porridge
1/2 oz. of butter INGREDIENTS for 3 oz. of lentil sufficient for 2 persons. flour, 1 pint of water, salt, oz. of butter.
AVERAGE COST, 2d.
Put the flour and salt in a basin and mix with a little cold water; add the rest of the water boiling, then put on the fire and boil for 10 minutes. Just before serving, stir in the butter. Lentil flour makes a nice porridge mixed with an equal quantity of barley flour.
TIME.-10 minutes to boil the porridge.
SEASONABLE in winter. (Vegetarian Lentil Rissoles.
Recipe.) - INGREDIENTS for 6 rissoles.- lb. of lentils, either boiled or baked, oz. of butter, pepper, salt and nutmeg, egg and breadcrumbs, a little parsley. AVERAGE COST, 6d.
Cook the lentils soft enough to mash, drain them, mash them with the butter and add the seasoning. Roll the pastry very thin and stamp it in rounds, into each of which put some of the lentil mixture; then fold over, wet the edges and stick them together. Dip the rissoles in egg and bread-crumbs and fry in oil or butter.
TIME.-5 minutes to fry the rissoles.
SEASONABLE at any time.
LENTIL.
Two recipes have run together here, and the fractions have dropped out of the ingredient lists in transcription — a common fate for Beeton's vulgar fractions. Read the quantities as guides rather than gospel.
- The missing fractionsThe porridge reads "3 oz. of lentil flour ... 1 pint of water, salt, [?] oz. of butter" — the butter was almost certainly half an ounce. In the rissoles, "lb. of lentils" is likely half a pound and the butter again half an ounce. Nothing in the printed text confirms these, so treat them as reconstruction.
- Lentil flourSold in the Victorian period as an invalid and nursery food (the proprietary "Revalenta" preparations were milled pulse), and still available as red lentil flour or besan-adjacent milled pulse flour. Fine dried red lentils ground in a spice mill or high-speed blender give the same thing.
- Ratio and consistency3 oz of flour to a pint (20 fl oz British) of water is a thin gruel by modern taste. For a spoonable porridge use closer to 4–5 oz to the pint, and expect it to thicken further as it stands.
- Lump controlThe hinge of the method is slaking the flour with cold water first, then pouring on the boiling water. Reverse the order and you get a basin of lumps that no amount of beating will rescue.
- Ten minutes is not enoughRaw pulse flour tastes chalky and green at ten minutes. Fifteen to twenty over a low flame, stirred often, cooks the starch out and loses the beany edge.
- The rissoles need pastryThe ingredient list omits it, but the method calls for rolling pastry thin and stamping rounds — these are turnovers, not the bare croquettes the word "rissole" now suggests. Allow about 8 oz of shortcrust, or drop the pastry and shape the seasoned mash into patties instead.
- FryingFive minutes in shallow oil or butter at around 350F browns them; butter alone will darken fast, so a mix of butter and a neutral oil is steadier.
- YieldThe porridge serves two as stated, as a breakfast or supper dish. The rissoles make six, which is a light meal for two or a first course for three.
Lentil flour belongs to the great Victorian enthusiasm for cheap, concentrated vegetable protein. Pulse meals were promoted through the second half of the nineteenth century as economical nourishment for the poor, for invalids and for the growing vegetarian movement — the Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847, at a meeting at Northwood Villa in Ramsgate, and had its base in the Manchester area thereafter; by the time later editions of Beeton were being assembled, recipes labelled "vegetarian" had found a place in the book. The twopenny cost given for the porridge is the point of it: a hot, filling dish for two at a very low price. The suggestion to cut lentil flour with an equal quantity of barley flour is practical rather than culinary — barley softens the flat, faintly earthy taste of the pulse, and both were sold from the same sort of grocer's drawer.