January journal: oatmeal

[ursula]

rugessnome asked me to post about, "Your choice of ingredient that you've used in recreating historical recipes but isn't used much in modern American cooking, or is used very differently."

I've been pretty good about writing up my medieval cooking experiments in the last few years, so I'm having a hard time thinking of something that I've used recently but haven't written about. This probably means that I'm taking some odd practice for granted. But let's talk about a tiny recipe mystery involving something I don't use very often: oatmeal.

I like granola, but I've never liked oatmeal for breakfast (I wish I did, since it's compatible with a bunch of my annoying dietary constraints!) Consider, now, this anti-oatmeal recipe for "buttered worts", from Gentyll manly Cokere, c. 1500:

To make buttyrd Wortys. Take all maner of gode herbys that ye may gette pyke them washe them and hacke them and boyle them vp in fayre water and put ther to butture clarefied A grete quantite And when they be boylde enowgh salt them but let non Ote mele come ther yn And dyse brede in small gobbetts & do hit in dyshys and powre the wortes A pon and serue hit furth.

Notice the warning: "let non Ote mele come ther yn" ("Let no oatmeal come therein"). A similar recipe from a slightly earlier source has the same prohibition.

Why, you might ask yourself, are the recipe writers going out of their way to warn you not to put oatmeal in your dish of buttery greens? One answer shows up in a seventeenth-century Danish cookbook:

VI. To cook cabbage

There is no need to write much about it, every farmer’s wife knows how. And often at a farmer’s you will taste a better cabbage than in the noble’s kitchen. However this is how a cabbage is cooked: Put water and oats on the fire with a red onion or two finely chopped. Let it seethe until it is nice and smooth. Chop the cabbage finely, the finer the better it will be. When the sauce is smooth then put the cabbage into it and let it seethe until it is soft. Then put butter in: but if you want it with lard then grind the lard finely first and let it seethe with the oats.

It's unusual to see a medieval recipe for oatmeal with vegetables, because "every farmer's wife knows how"--you have to infer its ubiquity in other ways, such as the prohibitions against it. (A friend once shared a variation on the oatmeal-with-vegetables theme using steel-cut oats and bacon, and it was very good!)

While I'm browsing, here's a recipe for a snack or dessert involving a sweet oatmeal pudding on toast:

To make a cawdle of Ote meale.. TAke two handful or more of great otemeale, and beat it in a Stone Morter wel, then put it into a quart of ale, and set it on the fire, and stirre it, season it with Cloues, mace, and Suger beaten, and let it boile til it be enough, then serue it forth vpon Soppes.

And the Danish cookbook has a recipe for cherry glop on fried bread, which is more the sort of dessert I would choose:

Take cherries and put them in a colander so that they don’t touch each other. Put the colander in a warm oven so that they are well dried and then they are good prunes. These you can use this way: Take wine and water equal amounts. Seethe the cherries in it and put some sugar into it. Then fry bread in butter and let this sauce over it.

Comments

[kareina]

I m curious, you don't like oatmeal. Is it the taste or the texture? Have you tried the greens with oats? I hadn't heard of anyone else doing greens and oats, but I often add a small handful of dried nettles to my oatmeal, which gives a very different flavour. I suspect that using a larger amount of fresh greens would also hugely change the texture (and I am so going to try, since I love oats and I love greens).

[ursula]

It's mostly the texture--I like oats when they have some crunch--though savoriness does help me work around childhood suspicions. I think using something like steel-cut oats would help.

Please do try the greens and report back!

[kareina]

I did a quick variation today in the microwave, using about half as much oats as I normally would for a single serving, but the same amount of water, and added some garlic powder onion powder, salt and pepper. I gave the oats, water, and spices a couple of minutes in the microwave on high (stiring after one minute), then added a fair bit of frozen, loose chooped, kale and cooked for several more minutes, stiring after each minute (I don't recall how long it took), adding some butter and a spoonfull of almond meal right before the final minute.

I was really happy with the result. Greens with a thickish sauce and a nice flavour. I guess the almond meal might not have been a traditional addition, but I wanted the extra protein.

[ursula]

Cool!

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a medieval variation with almond milk, though I'd expect that to leave out the butter.

[loligo]

Thanks for posting; this is fascinating! Now I kind of want to try the cabbage recipe.

[ursula]

I think the cabbage recipe is the ancestor of mashed potato dishes like colcannon and the Dutch thing involving potatoes and endive!

[krait]

Interesting! I love running into little hints about the things that are so "everyone knows" that they're rarely recorded.


then put it into a quart of ale, and set it on the fire, and stirre it,

At first I read this as "and set it on fire," and spent a minute being very impressed by Truly Hardcore Medieval Cooks. 'Douse it in alcohol, set it alight, then stir' sounds like a true recipe for disaster! :D