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Breakfast

Oatmeal Porridge

A dish of oatmeal cooked in water until thick, served with milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hamilton, Margaret · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Oatmeal Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the porridge

  1. Put a saucepan on the fire with water in proportion to the quantity of porridge required.

  2. Just before the water comes to the boil, begin sprinkling in the meal regularly with the left hand while stirring with a porridge-stick in the other hand.

  3. Stir until the meal is quite through the boil, so there are no lumps or knots.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the salt and boil 10 minutes longer.

Alternative method

  1. Bring the water to boiling point in a saucepan.

  2. Shake in the meal lightly and gradually, stirring all the time.

  3. Stir for about five minutes.

  4. Move the saucepan to a cooler part of the range.

  5. Add the salt and keep steadily boiling for about one and a half hours, stirring frequently.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet milk.

  2. Serve with new milk or cream.

By Hamilton, Margaret. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal (in the method)
Thickens the porridge as its starch swells and sets in the boiling water.
Water
Hydrates the meal and cooks it into a soft, pourable porridge.

The step that matters

Sprinkling in the meal while stirring. Dry meal clumps when it hits hot water in a heap. Adding it gradually while stirring separates the particles so they hydrate evenly and no lumps form.

“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.

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