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Browned Oatmeal
Cut cold oatmeal into slices. Beat up one egg with four tablespoonfuls of milk, and dip the oatmeal in this. Heat a little bacon fat to bubbling in a frying-pan and carefully brown the slices in it.
A frying recipe that depends entirely on the porridge being set firm enough to slice, which is the part the original assumes you already know.
- The hinge: the oatmeal must be cold and solidLeftover porridge has to be pressed into a loaf pan or shallow dish while still hot and chilled at least four hours, preferably overnight. Loose refrigerated oatmeal will collapse in the pan; it should turn out as a firm block you can cut with a knife.
- Slice thicknessAbout half an inch. Thinner slices break when turned, thicker ones stay cold in the middle before the outside colours.
- What "oatmeal" means hereVery likely a coarse or steel-cut oatmeal cooked long and stiff, which sets hard enough to slice, though rolled oats were also common by this period. Modern rolled or quick oats set softer and wetter; if that is what you have, cook the porridge a little drier than you would to eat it.
- The egg dipFour tablespoons of milk is a quarter cup; with the egg beaten in you have something over a third of a cup, enough to coat several slices. Dip briefly and let the excess run off, since a saturated slice will slump. A dusting of flour on the slice before dipping helps the coating cling.
- Bacon fat"A little" means a thin film, two to three teaspoons in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Butter scorches at the temperature needed for a good crust; bacon fat, lard or a neutral oil all work.
- TimingThree to four minutes a side over medium heat. Move the slices only once, when the underside has set into a crust and releases from the pan on its own.
- ServingThe recipe gives no yield or accompaniment. Yield depends on the pan: a standard loaf pan cut at half an inch gives well over a dozen slices. Syrup, molasses or butter, or a plate of bacon and eggs, are the obvious accompaniments.
Frying cold cereal into slices is one of the oldest and thriftiest tricks in the American breakfast repertoire, closely related to fried cornmeal mush and to the Pennsylvania scrapple that stretches the same idea with pork. Porridge in a nineteenth-century household was cooked in large quantity, often overnight in a double boiler, because coarse oats take an hour or more; leftovers were common enough that pouring what remained into a pan to set was a matter of course rather than a special preparation. Domestic-science writers of the era were making a moral argument about household waste, and such expedients belonged to that tradition. The egg-and-milk dip here does the work of a batter, giving the slice a crust that plain frying does not.