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Porridge Pudding
3 cups cold oatmeal porridge 3 2 eggs 3 cups milk 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup chopped raisins or currants Mix ingredients and bake about 30 minutes. Any cold porridges, or boiled rice, can be used in this way, and will give a variety of delicious dishes easily prepared. Vanilla or lemon extract or nutmeg can be used for flavoring, and raisins and currants omitted.
A thrift pudding built on yesterday's oatmeal, bound with a thin egg custard. The original gives no oven temperature and no dish size, so both are worth settling before you start.
- Oven temperatureUnstated in the original, as was common when ranges were judged by hand. Bake at 350F (a moderate oven); anything hotter will curdle the custard and weep liquid.
- Timing is optimisticThree cups of milk with only two eggs is a loose mixture, and 30 minutes will not set it in a deep dish. Expect 45 to 60 minutes at 350F in a 2-quart baking dish, until the centre is just barely trembling. A shallower dish sets faster.
- Cold oatmeal porridgeThis means leftover cooked oatmeal, chilled and stiff, not dry oats. Break it up thoroughly with a fork or whisk in a little of the milk first, or you will get gluey lumps suspended in custard.
- CurrantsDried currants, not fresh redcurrants. They are small dried grapes, close kin to raisins; either works, and both benefit from a five-minute soak in hot water.
- Egg ratioTwo eggs to three cups of milk is a very soft set, relying on the starch in the porridge for body. If you want a pudding that slices, use three or four eggs.
- Flavouring quantitiesThe note about vanilla or lemon extract gives no amount: a teaspoon of extract, or a quarter teaspoon of grated nutmeg, suits this volume.
- Rice versionThe recipe explicitly allows boiled rice in place of the porridge, giving a straightforward baked rice pudding. Rice releases less starch than oatmeal, so expect a slightly looser set.
- YieldServes six as a plain dessert, warm or cold, with cream or a little brown sugar.
Puddings like this one exist because porridge was made in quantity and nothing edible was thrown away. In Scottish and North American households where oatmeal was a standard breakfast, leftover porridge reappeared as fried porridge slices, as a thickener for soup, or in a baked custard of exactly this kind. The recipe's closing line is the real point of it: the instruction is generic, applying to any cold cooked grain, and turns a leftover into a sweet course with the addition of eggs, milk, sugar and dried fruit already in the house. Such second-day dishes are common in period household cookery writing, and they tend to be written telegraphically.