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Bread and Milk
1129. Cut or break stale bread into fragments, then boil in milk for a quarter of an hour.
FRUMETY. 1130. Boil a quarter of a pint of wheat for three or four hours, then add one quart of milk, with two spoonfuls of flour mixed with it, two eggs, three parts of a small teacupful of raisins and currants, a little lemon-peel and cinnamon. Boil for a quarter of an hour, and serve .
Another. Bake wheat in water till every corn is broken and completely swelled out, adding more water as it is taken up by the wheat. Then add some milk, sugar, and nutmeg to taste, either with or without currants and raisins; just give it a boil up, adding at the last a last a little cream thickened with flour.
Two nursery-and-invalid dishes of the plainest sort: bread simmered in milk, and frumenty, whole wheat cooked soft in milk. Both hinge on giving the grain enough time and on not letting the milk catch.
- Which wheat"Wheat" here means whole wheat berries, not flour. Modern wheat berries or spelt behave much the same way; an overnight soak will shorten the three-to-four-hour boil, though by how much depends on the grain.
- A quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup, and it swells to roughly two or three times that volume. A quart of milk is 40 fl oz imperial, about five US cups.
- ScorchingMilk sitting on grain sticks and burns the moment it reduces. Use a heavy pan, keep the heat low and stir often, or set the pan over simmering water.
- The eggsTwo eggs stirred into boiling milk will scramble. Beat them with a ladleful of the hot mixture first, return it to the pan and hold it below a simmer until it thickens rather than boiling the full quarter-hour.
- Bread and milk timingFifteen minutes in milk reduces stale bread to paste, which was the point when the dish was fed to children and convalescents. Three or four minutes gives softened pieces still holding their shape.
- Lemon-peelPared strips of zest with no white pith, fished out before serving. Fine grated zest turns bitter over a long boil.
- Baked versionThe second frumenty is oven-cooked with water topped up as the grain drinks it, then finished on the stove. No temperature or time is given; a covered dish in a low oven for several hours, checked and watered as the water is taken up, will do the job.
- Yield and servingThe frumenty makes several servings. Both are served warm in bowls; the first frumenty and the bread and milk contain no sugar at all, while the second version adds sugar to taste.