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Oatmeal Porridge

A simple hot dish made by boiling water, adding salt and oatmeal, and cooking until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Oatmeal Porridge

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a saucepan with water and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add a pinch of salt to the boiling water.

Cook

  1. Sprinkle oatmeal into the boiling water while stirring briskly with a fork or spoon to prevent lumps.

  2. Once thickened, let it boil until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Serve with treacle, cream, milk, or sugar as desired.

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

Oatmeal
Its starch swells and thickens the cooking water, giving the porridge its body.
Water
Hydrates the oats so their starch can swell and soften as the porridge cooks.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the oatmeal while stirring briskly. Oats hitting hot water begin to gelatinize on the outside at once, so dry centers get trapped in clumps if the oats are not dispersed quickly and evenly. Vigorous stirring during the sprinkle keeps the porridge 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.

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