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Oatmeal Mush

A simple dish of oatmeal cooked slowly in water with salt and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Oatmeal Mush

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine oatmeal and cold water in a pot.

  2. Add salt and cook slowly for 1 to 2 hours, adding hot water as needed.

  3. Stir in butter just before serving.

  4. Alternatively, soak oatmeal overnight, add boiling water, and cook in the morning.

  5. For best results, use a double boiler.

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
Forms the thick body of the mush as its starch swells and softens in water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished mush.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly over long time. Oatmeal starch needs sustained gentle heat to swell fully and soften. Cooking too fast can scorch the bottom of the pot or leave the mush unevenly thick, which is why adding hot water as needed and keeping the heat low matters.

“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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