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Oatmeal Water
2 tablespoons oatmeal. 1 quart cold water Cook slowly for about 2 hours, boiling down to a pint. Strain while hot and add enough cold boiled water to make 1 quart of fluid. Set aside in covered dish to cool.
A thin invalid drink, barely more than starch-flavoured water, from the days when nursing at home meant coaxing calories into someone who could keep nothing else down. The ingredient list has been scrambled in the original printing, so read it with care.
- The garbled ingredient listThe title says oatmeal but the printed ingredients say rice, and both sit oddly next to a quart of water. The measure printed is 1 tablespoon of grain to 1 quart of water; the safest reading is to take the grain named in the title and treat the rice line as a stray from the neighbouring entry.
- Which oatmealIn a book of this vintage "oatmeal" may well mean steel-cut or coarse-ground oats rather than rolled flakes, though rolled oats were widely sold by this period and the recipe does not specify. Rolled oats will break down further over two hours; pinhead oats give a clearer liquor.
- Cook slowlyRead this as a bare simmer. The recipe says nothing about the lid during cooking; a hard boil will reach the pint mark well before the two hours the recipe allows.
- Boiling down to a pintA quart reduced by half over two hours is roughly the right pace. Judge by volume rather than the clock and top up with hot water if it falls short early.
- Strain while hotCooled starch water sets and clings to the grain. Pour it through a fine sieve or muslin the moment it comes off the heat, and press only lightly, or the drink turns cloudy.
- Cold boiled waterThis means water that has been boiled and then cooled, a standard 1900s precaution when tap supplies were suspect. Filtered or bottled water serves the same purpose now.
- Keeping itA quart of dilute starch is an excellent medium for bacteria. Cover it, refrigerate as soon as it stops steaming, and discard anything left after 24 hours.
- Yield and servingOne quart, meant to be sipped through the day at room temperature or barely cool. Some period sources suggest seasoning lightly with salt, or with a little sugar and lemon if the patient could take it; this recipe says nothing about it.
Invalid cookery was a fixed department of American household manuals well into the twentieth century, when most illness was nursed at home and a cook was expected to produce something for a patient who could manage nothing solid. Barley water, rice water, toast water and oatmeal water were the standard repertoire: cereal grains simmered long in plain water, strained, and given as a bland, mildly nourishing drink. The tradition is old and largely pre-scientific, resting on the belief that a grain's virtue passed into the cooking liquid, and gruels and grain waters were prescribed for fevers and bowel complaints long before anyone measured a calorie. Oatmeal water in particular is often traced to Scottish and Irish domestic practice, where thin oat drinks were also given to field workers in hot weather.