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Wheaten Grits
Half pound wheaten grits, one pint cold water, half pint cold milk and a teaspoon salt. Place the water, milk and salt in a saucepan and let come to a boil, then add the wheaten grits and boil slowly for one and a half hours, mixing with a wooden spoon occasionally to prevent burning at the bottom. Pour into a hot dish and serve with cold cream or milk and soft sugar separately.
A plain breakfast porridge of cracked wheat, written for a coal range where a pot could sit at a bare simmer for most of the morning. Almost nothing needs changing except the vessel and, if you use a fine modern cereal, the time.
- What wheaten grits areCoarsely cracked or granulated wheat, sold today as cracked wheat or (in the coarser grades) wheat semolina. Bulgur and farina are related wheat products but cook far faster and are not straight substitutes. It is not maize hominy grits, which behave differently and need less time.
- The liquid is scantHalf a pound of grits is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups; a pint of water plus half a pint of milk gives 3 cups of liquid. That is a thick porridge, though the recipe still expects it to pour into the dish. Coarse cracked wheat may want more hot water added as it thickens.
- Use a double boilerAn hour and a half of direct heat on a modern burner risks scorching the base even with frequent stirring. Set the pan over simmering water, or hold it at the lowest possible flame with a heat diffuser.
- Timing depends on the gradeCoarse cracked wheat genuinely wants 60 to 90 minutes. Fine farina or a modern quick-cooking wheat cereal is done in 5 to 15 minutes and will turn to glue if held for an hour.
- Add the grain in a streamRain it into the boiling liquid while stirring rather than tipping it in at once, or the outside of the lumps sets and the centres stay raw.
- Soft sugarPeriod term for fine-grained white or light brown sugar, as opposed to loaf sugar that had to be broken and pounded. Superfine or light brown sugar is the equivalent.
- Milk scorchesMilk sugars catch readily and add to the risk at the bottom of the pan, though the starch from the grain sticks too. Keeping the milk in the mix is worth it for flavour, but it is another argument for indirect heat.
- YieldFour generous breakfast servings. Leftovers set firm enough to be turned out of a loaf tin, sliced and fried in butter the next day.
Long-boiled wheat porridges were an everyday breakfast in northern Europe and Britain before packaged cereals took over, and "wheaten" simply distinguished them from the oatmeal, barley and maize versions on the same page of a book like this one. The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it sets plain national staples alongside restaurant cookery; a dish of grits with cold cream and sugar poured over it belongs to the former. Serving the cream and sugar separately was common in period breakfast cookery, and the long slow boil suits a stove that stayed hot all day whether you wanted it or not.