Home › The World's Kitchen › Oatmeal Porridge
Oatmeal Porridge
One-half pound oatmeal, one-half pint cold milk, one pint cold water, one-half teaspoon salt. Place the water, milk and salt in a saucepan and let come to a boil, then add the oatmeal and slowly boil for twenty-five minutes, lightly stirring occasionally to prevent burning at the bottom. Pour it into a hot dish and sere with cold cream or cold milk and powdered sugar separately.
A straightforward porridge, but the proportions and the 25-minute boil only make sense if you know which oats are meant.
- Which oatmealHalf a pound of "oatmeal" here is coarse or medium-cut oats — steel-cut or stone-ground meal, roughly 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups. Rolled oats will disintegrate into paste long before 25 minutes, and instant oats are hopeless for this method.
- Liquid ratioOne pint water plus half a pint milk is 3 cups total, which is a modest 2:1 against the oats and will give a stiff, spoon-standing porridge. Add another half cup of water partway through if you want it looser.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes at a bare boil is right for steel-cut oats and is not padding — the grain needs that long to soften through. If you substitute rolled oats, cut it to about five minutes and expect a different texture entirely.
- ScorchingMilk in the pot from the start means the bottom will catch. Use a heavy saucepan, keep the heat low enough that it barely bubbles, and stir more often than "occasionally" suggests.
- Adding the oatsRain the meal into the boiling liquid in a thin stream while stirring, rather than dumping it in, or you will get lumps that never break down.
- ServingThe cold cream or milk and the sugar are passed separately; a traditional way of eating porridge so served is to dip each spoonful of hot porridge into the cold cream. Salt is already in the pot, so taste before adding more.
- YieldServes three to four as written. Leftovers set firm when chilled and can be sliced and fried, a use for cold porridge that turns up in period cookery.
- Typo"Sere" in the last line is a printer's error for "serve."
Oatmeal boiled with salted water is among the plainest and longest-established of northern European breakfasts; oats grow where wheat sulks, and Scotland and the north of England built a whole grain economy on them. Several details here echo Scottish practice: salt cooked into the pot, a long slow boil for coarse-cut meal, and cold cream served in a separate bowl for dipping, so that the contrast of hot and cold is part of the dish. The milk in the cooking liquid and the powdered sugar on the side depart from the plainest water-and-salt version.