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Uncooked Oatmeal Water
Take a cupful of oatmeal, the juice and rinds of three lemons, cut thin, a cup of sugar, and put in a stone jug. Pour over three quarts of boiling water, and let it stand until the sugar is dissolved and it is cold. The strain and chill.
A steeped grain drink of the barley-water family, meant for the sickroom. Nothing is cooked: boiling water is poured over raw oatmeal and lemon, and the whole thing is strained off once cold.
- The hinge is the strainEverything depends on getting the grain out cleanly. Pour through a fine sieve lined with damp cheesecloth or a coffee filter, and resist pressing the solids through, which pushes starch into the liquid and makes it cloudy and gluey.
- What oatmeal meantIn older usage, oatmeal generally means ground or cut oats rather than the rolled flakes sold today; coarse or medium cut oats, or steel-cut, work well. Instant or quick oats disintegrate into paste and will fight the strainer.
- Stone jugA glazed stoneware crock or jug, which will take boiling water without cracking. Any heatproof, non-reactive vessel serves: a large pitcher, a Dutch oven, a stockpot with a lid.
- Rinds cut thinTake the yellow zest in wide strips with a peeler and leave the white pith behind. Pith steeped for hours in hot water turns the drink bitter, and there are three lemons' worth here.
- Cooling timeThree quarts takes several hours to come down to room temperature. The recipe's own cue is that the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is cold; then strain and refrigerate rather than leaving it standing on the counter.
- KeepingThis is an uncooked grain infusion with no preservative beyond sugar and lemon. Treat it as fresh juice: refrigerate at once after straining and use within two days.
- SugarA full cup in three quarts reads sweet by current taste. Half is enough if you are drinking it for pleasure.
- YieldRoughly three quarts before straining, a little less after, or about twelve tumblers. It separates as it stands, so stir or shake before pouring.
Oatmeal water is generally traced to the old family of invalid drinks built on steeped grain, alongside barley water and rice water, which appear in English household manuals well before American ones and were, it is often said, prescribed for fevers, convalescence, and stomach complaints on the theory that a thin starchy liquid nourished without taxing the patient. The same drink is said to have had a second life outside the sickroom as a harvest-field and haymaking beverage, oatmeal and water being what a farm kitchen could send out by the bucket. Close relatives may survive today in the Latin American avena tradition, though those are usually sweetened with milk and cinnamon rather than lemon.