Skip to main content
Main

Cereals

A simple boiled cereal made by simmering cereal in salted water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Cereals

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Bring water to a rapid boil.

  2. Add salt for each cup of cereal.

  3. Slowly sprinkle cereal into boiling water, stirring until well mixed.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes without stirring.

Finish cooking

  1. Continue cooking in a double boiler or with asbestos under the saucepan.

  2. Fine cereals need 3.5 to 6 times as much water; coarse cereals need 2 to 3 times.

  3. For a fireless cooker, boil cereal in salted water for 10 minutes, then place in cooker overnight.

Serve

  1. Stir in small pieces of cooked fruit before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Cereal
Its starch swells and thickens the water, setting the mixture into a porridge.
Water
Hydrates the cereal starch so it gelatinizes and softens into a smooth porridge.

The step that matters

Slowly sprinkle the cereal into boiling water while stirring. Dry cereal starch clumps when dumped in at once, because the outer grains hydrate and seal before the inside can. Sprinkling slowly into rapidly boiling water while stirring separates the grains so they swell evenly and the porridge stays smooth.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes