Graham Mush

A plain overnight cereal from the fireless-cooker chapter: five minutes on the stove, then hours of retained heat in an insulated box. Two things need translating — the flour and the cooker.

• Graham flourSylvester Graham's coarse, unsifted whole wheat. Modern stone-ground whole wheat flour is the closest match; ordinary whole wheat flour works but gives a smoother, less nubbly mush.
• The lumping problemThis is the hinge. Whisk the flour into a cup of the cold water to a smooth slurry first, then stir that into the remaining two cups at a boil. Dry flour dropped into boiling water gelatinizes on contact and the lumps are hard to work out afterwards.
• What a fireless cooker wasAn insulated wooden or metal chest, sometimes with preheated soapstone discs, that held a boiled pot's heat for hours without fuel. The nearest modern equivalents are a wide-mouth vacuum flask or a slow cooker on low.
• Overnight holdingA fireless cooker coasts down through warm temperatures for hours, and cooked cereals are a known medium for Bacillus cereus, whose spores survive boiling. If you want mush in the morning, cook it in the morning, or hold it in a slow cooker that stays genuinely hot rather than an unheated box.
• Consistency and saltOne part flour to three parts water sets very stiff after a long soak — stiff enough to slice and fry, which was the usual second-day treatment. For spoonable porridge, go to four cups of water. Salt goes in the water, not the flour.
• The stray hominy line"1 cup hominy" does not belong to this recipe; it appears to be the opening ingredient of the next one, stranded at the page break.
• Yield and servingRoughly three cups, enough for three or four bowls. Mush of this kind was usually served with milk or cream and a sweetener such as brown sugar, molasses or maple syrup, and leftovers could be pressed into a pan, chilled, sliced and fried.