ALL ABOUT OATMEAL.
ByDORA DE BLAQUIÈRE.
T
henative land of the common oat seems to be absolutely unknown, but as in many other cases, the best authorities have given it an origin in Central Asia. The wild oat from which it descends is found in Europe, in North Africa, Siberia, Japan, and the North-West Provinces of India; and it was well known to the Greeks and Romans, though it is not one of the cereals that are mentioned in the Bible. But the common oat, as we know it, is an improved form (says Professor Buckman) derived by a continued and selective cultivation from the aboriginal wild oat, of which I have been speaking. The word oat or oats is from an old English wordata, from the verbetau, to eat; and it means anything in the way of food which can be eaten. The botanical name of the genus isavena, and there are upwards of forty species in it, which are generally natives of cold or temperate climes. It can be grown in a wider range of climatical differences than wheat, but in a less range than barley, while in every temperate region it has become recognised as a food for horses. In the more northerly parts, where less wheat is grown, it has formed the staple food for man, under the two well-known forms,i.e., of porridge and oatcake.
A drug has been distilled from it under the name ofAvena Sattisa, which is supposed to give the qualities of cheerfulness and spirit; the same qualities, in short, which the oat is considered to give to horses.
In the returns of 1894, for the United Kingdom, we find that oats are more cultivated than wheat, but it is much to be regretted that the use of oatmeal as food is becoming unfashionable amongst the poorer classes in England, who consider that wheat is a more refined food, and who leave off oatmeal when possible. The Highlanders of Scotland are an example of muscular vigour, and also of the clear intellects which are fostered under its regimen; one of the old Edinburgh reviewers says, “We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal,” and, at some time of the day, in Scotland, the native consumes oatmeal under some form or other. Porridge for breakfast is known in other lands as well as in Scotland, and is quite as well liked, particularly when a generous larder affords cream in thickness and plenty. But to be a true son of Scotland you must be above such frivolous additions. The kernels or grain of the oat, deprived of the husks, are called groats, or grits; and in old days they were used entire in broths and soups, like hot barley. When bruised you will recognise them very well, as forming part of a sick folk dietary.Sowans, known also as seeds orflummery, is made from the thin pellicles or inner scales which adhere to the groats in the process of shelling. These are steeped in water for a few days, till they ferment and become sourish. They are then skimmed and the liquid boiled down so much, that when cold it will become of the thickness of gruel. In Wales this is known asSucan Budrum, and is prepared in the same manner; but it is boiled down even more, to become, when cold, a firm jelly, like blanc-mange. It has a high reputation as a nutritious, light food, for weak stomachs. Chemically speaking, in this change, the starch has been converted into dextrin and sugar, the latter passing at once into acetic fermentation.
Sowans is used as a light supper dish, with milk, cream, or butter, and sweetened with sugar to taste.
Bread is made of oatmeal mixed with pea-flour in parts of Lancashire, as well as in Scotland. A peck of oatmeal and another of peameal may be mixed thoroughly together, and sifted through a sieve to which add three or four ounces of salt, and make into dough with warm water. Then roll into thin cakes or flat rolls, and bake on a hot plate or in the oven. This, of course, is unfermented bread. In Scotland the thick cakes of oatmeal are called bannock, and the thin ones cakes, and in the farm-houses a great number are made at once and stored on a rack close to the ceiling, where they will keep for a long time if quite dry. When needed, they are crisped before the fire and slightly browned.
Bread is also made of oatmeal and wheat flour; also oatmeal and rice. Take a peck each of flour and oatmeal and half a peck of potatoes, peeled and washed and boiled. Knead into a dough with yeast, salt, and warm milk. Make into loaves and bake as usual. Rice is made in the same manner.
In the early centuries oatmeal was eaten almost altogether raw by the Scot, as indeed was the flour of wheat, and I daresay every other kind. In Mrs. Stone’s delightful book,Teneriffe and its Seven Satellites, she gives an account of the food of the population of the islands, and says that it was undoubtedly a primeval usage derived from the mysterious Guanches, the first inhabitants of the Isles, a civilised people who embalmed their dead, but have long since ceased to exist as a separate people. This flour is prepared by first roasting the wheat itself, then grinding it, and afterwards storing it in bags for carriage. It is eaten simply mixed with cold water, and is not only palatable, but delicious, with a sweet and nutty flavour, caused by the previous wasting of the grain. Even now, in many parts of Scotland, oatmeal is eaten uncooked and stirred simply into hot or cold water, with salt, mixed together in a basin. This is called brose, a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon, and the same as breuis and broth, the word meaning the liquor in which meat or anything else is boiled and macerated. Kail brose is made of green vegetable, mixed with the oatmeal, and it may have meal or broth as well. Plain brose is called often “sojer’s brose,” as it was made in haste, and “crowdy” is also a Scotch word, used to describe any food of the porridge kind, or a mixture of oatmeal and any liquid at hand, which might be milk, or even something far stronger.
The cooking of oatmeal marks an advance in civilisation, I suppose. Even the very word porridge is more recent, and marks an epoch when the Scotch received some instructions from one of the Latin nations; the original word being either from the Latinporrus, a leek, or the old Frenchporree, or a pottage, made of beets with other pot herbs, a kind of food made by boiling vegetables in water with or without meat.
The person who taught me to make the best of porridge was an Irishwoman, and her method was to stir the oatmeal into the pot containing the boiling water, which must be bubbling fiercely, and must also have been salted. The oatmeal she sprinkled in with her left hand (having the oatmeal close to her) and stirring all the time busily with her right hand. Long experience will tell you how thick to make it, and it wants at least half an hour’s boiling to cook it properly.
But the most delightful form of gruel is that made by a Scotchwoman with milk and not water; and this needs well boiling too. Many people, however, prefer the gruel made by steeping the oatmeal in water for some hours, and pouring off the water and boiling that. The best gruel, I consider, is to be obtained on an Atlantic steamer; especially if it should happen to be of Scotch extraction, and to have a Scotch stewardess. There is some consolation in your sorrows at sea, if you can get some of the chicken broth they make on the Cunard steamers, which is quite too good to be forgotten. They put barley into it, I think, or perhaps rice; but whatever the flavour is, I have never succeeded in obtaining the same on shore, and I am inclined to think it is the long boiling that is the secret. When cold it forms a solid and nearly clear jelly.
There is plenty of oatmeal, too, in haggis, that essentially Scottish dish, which Robert Burns called “The great chieftain of the pudding race.” The component parts of a haggis are a sheep’s head and liver, boiled, minced, mixed with suet, onions, oatmeal and seasoning, moistened with beef gravy, and put into a haggis bag and boiled. A haggis will keep for some time, as it is quite firm, and may be packed for a journey. But in that last event the onions must be omitted in the making of it. Both black and white puddings are indebted to oatmeal for some of their filling, but few people, unless educated up to it, appreciate either of these delicacies.
Cock-a-leekie is a Scotch name for a very ancient English dish, that was known as long ago as the 14th century by the name of Malachi. “Ma” is the old name for a fowl, and Malachi means sliced fowl. So, though the modern rendering seems to promise that the leeks in it would be too prominent for most people, it is a mistake. The fowl is first half roasted, then boiled in broth, then cut up, and served with a quantity of vegetables, mostly onions. Spices were added, and the broth was thickened with fine oatmeal.
There are some English recipes in which oatmeal plays a part, and the first that I remember is what is called tharfe cake, in Yorkshire, which is baked for the fifth of November. I give a very old family recipe for it. Take four pounds of fresh oatmeal and rub into it one pound of butter, one pound of brown sugar, a quarter of a pound of candied lemon peel, and two ounces of caraway seeds well bruised. Mix the whole with three pounds and a half of treacle. When the cake is baked, which should be in a slow oven, pour over it a little flavouring while hot.
Parkin is also a Yorkshire cake, which resembles tharfe cake, but is not so good. The following is also an old recipe for it, and both of these cakes will be found very good for children’s use. Rub half a pound of butter into three pounds of fine oatmeal, add one ounce of ginger, and as much stiff treacle as will make it into a stiff paste. Roll it out in cakes of about half an inch thick, lay these on buttered tins and bake in a slow oven. The tops may be washed over with milk, if you prefer it, as it has a more appetising effect perhaps. All the modern recipes for parkin contain baking powder and sugar, but for the first there is no need at all, as all these Yorkshire cakes are not at all of the light order, and are both heavy and stiff, nor are they intended to be very sweet.
One of the dishes in which oatmeal plays a part, is in the savoury or sweet porridge seen in Derbyshire and the north of England. It is made as follows: Oatmeal two or three tablespoons, onions two or three ounces, milk one pint, butter a quarter of a pound, pepper and salt one teaspoonful. Boil the onions in two waters; when tender shred them finely, and add them to the boiling milk, sprinkle in the oatmeal, add the butter, pepper and salt, boil during from ten to fifteen minutes, pour into soup plates and serve with sippets. Instead of onions, grated cheese may be stirred in with the oatmeal.
To make sweet porridge proceed in the same manner. Take the same quantity of oatmeal, but instead of onions and pepper put in two or three ounces each of sugar, sultanas and currants, and candied peel if you like it, and serve in the same manner. This is a very excellent porridge for children’s suppers.
In America, the coarse oatmeal is used for frying oysters. They are rolled in it—instead of either in flour or crackers—before frying, and a very good addition it makes. The oatmeal may also be used for chops or cutlets, if you have no crumbs.
I had nearly omitted a Persian dish, of oatmeal and honey, which is a kind of porridge made by beating up a tablespoonful of oatmeal and the same quantity of honey with the yolk of an egg, and then pouring on it a pint of boiling water and boiling the mixture for a few minutes.
The following is an oatmeal pudding. Take of oatmeal one pint, of boiling milk two pints, of eggs two and of salt a little. Pour the boiling milk over the oatmeal and let it soak all night. Add the eggs, well beaten; butter a basin that will just hold it, cover it tightly with a floured cloth and boil it an hour and a half. Eat it with cold butter and salt. When cool it may be sliced and toasted and eaten as oat-cake buttered.
A porridge of rice and oatmeal was once very popular amongst vegetarians. It was made by boiling eight ounces of rice in a pint of water, and as the water was absorbed, gradually adding two quarts more, also add half a tablespoon of sugar and some salt, and lastly stir in eight ounces of oatmeal, and let the whole boil for twenty minutes. If it be liked sweet, add two ounces of sugar, but if savoury add pepper, salt and some onions boiled and chopped.
Our forefathers were very fond of oatmeal flummery, but it has quite gone out of fashion, though an excellent dish. Put a pound and a half of fine white oatmeal to steep for a day and a night in cold water, and pour it off clear, adding as much more water, and let it stand for the same time; then strain it through a fine hair sieve, and boil it till as thick as hasty pudding, stirring it slowly all the time, and being most careful to prevent its burning. When you first strain the water off, put to it one large tablespoonful of white sugar and two tablespoonfuls of orange-flower water; then pour it into a bowl and serve. It is eaten cold, and with new milk, or cream, and sugar. I am sure my readers will have heard very often of “flummery,” and perhaps may like to try it for themselves.
An oatmeal hasty pudding also comes from Yorkshire. Beat the yolks of two eggs with half a pint of new milk, cold, and a little salt. Thicken this with fine oatmeal, and beat to a very smooth batter. Set a pint and a half of new milk on the fire, and when it is scalding hot pour in the batter, stirring it well that it may be smooth and not burn. Let it be over the fire till it thickens, but do not permit it to boil, and the moment you take it from the fire pour it into a dish. It is eaten with cold butter and sugar, and either a little lemon juice or vinegar.
In that delightful book,The Chemistry of Cookery, by Mr. W. Mathieu Williams, the well-known scientist and lecturer, a book that ought to be studied by every housekeeper, I find that he advocates the idea of porridge being made for some days before it is required, then stored in a closed jar, and brought out and warmed for use. The change effected in it is just that which may theoretically be expected,i.e., a softening of the fibrous material, and a sweetening, due to the formation of sugar. This may be called an application of the principle of ensilage to human food; for ensilage is a process of slow vegetable cookery, a digesting or maceration of fibrous vegetables in their own juices, which loosens the fibre, renders it softer and more digestible; and not only does this, but, to some extent, converts it into dextrine and sugar.
“Although in many respects,” says a recent writer, “oatmeal and flour are very similar, the effect produced by them upon the system is very different. Oatmeal is richer in oily, fatty matter than any other cultivated grain, and its proportion of proteine compounds exceeds that of the finest wheaten flour. Although so nutritious, it cannot be used as a substitute for flour; the peculiar character of its gluten preventing the meal being made into fermented bread. But in other forms it may be made into very pleasant food, such as biscuits, gruel, oatcake and porridge. Oats are a natural grain in England, and are cultivated at less expense than wheat. This last is better adapted for making good fermented bread, and so is more in request. But perhaps the time may come when we shall return to the use of unfermented bread, and shall think that bread made from other grains, and unfermented, is quite as good, or even better, than the fermented bread of flour. At the present time, however, wheat is more consumed than any other grain,” and with this long quotation I will conclude.