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Oatmeal with Cheese
1 cup oatmeal Water 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter T 1 cup grated cheese Cook the oatmeal over night and just before serving add the butter and cheese. Stir until the cheese is melted and serve at and cheese. Stir until the cheese is melted and serve at once.
A two-line supper dish that assumes a coal range with residual heat overnight. The recipe omits the water entirely, so that is the first thing to settle.
- The missing waterNo quantity is given. For long, slow cooking use 4 cups water to 1 cup steel-cut oats, or 3 cups to 1 cup of rolled oats; the mixture should be loose enough to stir when the cheese goes in.
- What "oatmeal" meantIn older cookbooks "oatmeal" may well mean coarse steel-cut or pinhead oats, which would make an overnight cook plausible; rolled oats were also common by this period, and they will soften to paste over so long a cook, so cook them 20 to 30 minutes instead.
- Cooking it overnightThe original would most likely have relied on a banked range or a fireless cooker. A slow cooker on low is the nearest modern equivalent, or a covered pot in a 200F oven; a double boiler over very low heat also works if you can leave a burner lit.
- Off the heat for the cheeseThis is the hinge. Add the butter and grated cheese with the pan off the burner and stir only until melted. Held over direct heat, cheese in a starchy porridge breaks and turns stringy and greasy.
- The cheeseAn unspecified "grated cheese" in an American household book of this era would most likely have been a plain firm factory Cheddar. Sharp Cheddar is the closest modern match; avoid pre-shredded, as the anti-caking coating dulls the melt.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt for one cup of oats is right for a savoury dish, but salted butter and aged Cheddar both add more. Salt the oats lightly at the start and correct at the end.
- YieldTwo generous servings or three modest ones. Serve immediately, as instructed, since it stiffens badly as it cools.
- The garbled textThe transcribed page repeats the last clause and carries a stray "T" in the ingredient list; the repetition looks like a transcription artifact, and the "T" may be a fragment of a lost or truncated line. Beyond the water measure, the method appears intact.
Overnight cooking was economy rather than affectation: a coal range held usable heat all night whether you used it or not, and a covered pot of oats cost nothing to cook in it. Adding butter and a cup of grated cheese turns the same pot into a meatless main course, a substitution of the kind that appears often in American household cookbooks.