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Semoulina
Boil in a small saucepan a pint water and half pint milk with a saltspoon salt. Gradually drop in six ounces semoulina. Briskly mix with the whisk while adding it and gently boil for fifteen minutes, occasionally mixing to prevent burning at the bottom. Pour into a deep dish and serve with cold milk or cream and fine sugar separately.
A plain semolina porridge, the kind served at breakfast or as a nursery supper across most of Europe. It works exactly as written; the only real risks are lumps and a scorched bottom.
- Semoulina is semolinaCoarse durum wheat middlings, sold today as semolina or, in Indian groceries, as sooji or rava. The fine grade gives a smoother porridge; coarse semolina needs the full fifteen minutes and then some.
- Weigh itSix ounces is about 170 g, or roughly a cup of fine semolina. Volume varies a good deal with grind, so the scale is worth using here.
- Liquid quantitiesA pint plus half a pint is 3 cups in American measure. If the book is using imperial pints, it is nearer 3 3/4 cups. Either works; the thinner version is easier to keep smooth.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. Do not skip it, as unsalted semolina tastes of nothing but starch.
- The hinge: rain it inAdd the semolina in a thin stream with the whisk already moving, and keep whisking until the mixture thickens. Dumped in at once it seizes into lumps that no amount of later beating will break up.
- Heat and stirringKeep it at the gentle boil the recipe calls for and stir from time to time, scraping the bottom corners of the pan. Semolina catches and scorches readily, and a burnt base flavours the whole dish.
- Fifteen minutes is realUnlike many old timings, this one is not excessive. Semolina cooked briefly stays gritty and tastes raw; the full quarter-hour is what makes it creamy.
- Yield and servingEnough for four as a breakfast or light pudding. Serve it hot in bowls with cold milk poured over and caster sugar alongside, as directed; grated nutmeg, cinnamon or a spoon of jam are common additions.
- LeftoversCooled in a shallow dish it sets firm enough to cut into squares, which can be fried in butter the next morning.
Semolina is a straightforward European breakfast grain, and the milk-and-water porridge given here is close to the German Grießbrei, the French semoule au lait and the Italian semolino. The word comes from the Italian semolino, a diminutive of semola, bran or meal, and refers to the coarse fraction left when durum wheat is milled — the same material used for dried pasta and for gnocchi alla romana. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries semolina had a reputation as invalid and nursery food in Britain and America, being cheap, bland and thought easy to digest.