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Cereal With Fruit
For variety, cereal may be cooked with well washed dates, raisins or dried apricots or peaches. Slices or sections of fresh apples, peaches and pears may be added during the last 30 minutes of cooking. Cereal molded in cups may be used for dessert. Stewed cereal may be served with any fruit previously stewed, or fresh fruits, or the cereal may be cooked in strained fruit juice or milk instead of water.
This is a set of variations on a base cereal porridge rather than a standalone recipe, and it assumes a grain that cooks for an hour or more. Everything hinges on which cereal you start with.
- Which cereal is meantThe 30-minute window for adding fresh fruit only makes sense with a long-cooking grain such as steel-cut oats, cracked wheat or whole hominy grits, which the base recipe presumably called for. Rolled oats cook in 10-15 minutes and instant oats in two, so with those, add fruit in the last few minutes instead.
- Dried fruit goes in at the startDates, raisins, apricots and peaches have time to plump and sweeten the grain. Chopping the apricots and peaches gives more even softening and spreads the fruit through the cereal.
- "Well washed" was literalDried fruit was often sold from bulk, and apricots and peaches were commonly sulphured, so a thorough wash made sense. Packaged dried fruit today needs only a rinse, though a brief soak in warm water still improves texture.
- Cooking in milkMilk scorches on direct heat once the starch thickens. Use a double boiler, or a heavy pan over low heat with frequent stirring.
- Cooking in fruit juiceGrains tend to soften more slowly in acidic liquid, so a cereal cooked in apple or apricot juice may take longer than one cooked in water. Half juice, half water is a more reliable starting point.
- Molded in cupsHot cereal sets firm as it cools because of the gelatinized starch. Pack it into wet or lightly oiled teacups or ramekins, chill until set, and turn out; serve with cream or a fruit sauce.
- SweeteningDates or raisins cooked in will sweeten the grain themselves; the recipe says nothing about added sugar either way.
- YieldNo quantities are given. As a guide, 1 cup of steel-cut oats to 4 cups liquid, plus about 1/2 cup chopped dried fruit, serves four.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and given free to policyholders, part of a broader early twentieth-century campaign in which insurers promoted health and nutrition on the reasoning that longer-lived customers were better business. That explains the tone here: no fixed quantities, just a set of thrifty variations on a grain the household was already cooking every morning. Long-cooked cereals were a breakfast staple in this period, and dried fruit was the cheapest way to sweeten and vary them out of season. The suggestion to mold cooled cereal in cups for dessert reflects the same economy, turning one pot of porridge into two meals.