It’s that time of year again — time to make hot cereal for breakfast. To be honest, we eat oatmeal most of the year (with the occasional cornmeal porridge thrown in), but it’s more appealing when it’s cold out — and maybe it’s time to broaden my horizons to other porridges too. So let’s take a look at the history of hot cereal around the world.

Oatmeal

Oats were domesticated about 3,000 years ago. They first appeared as weeds among other crops. The Romans considered oats a diseased form of wheat fit only to feed horses and scoffed at the “barbarians” who ate them. (Today 95% of oats are still grown for animals.) Oats have been grown in Scotland since late medieval times because they grow better in that climate than wheat. Oat porridge became a staple of the crofters’ diets. It was made with water and salt and stirred with a wooden stick called a spurtle, then cooled and stored for several days. Samuel Johnson referred to oats disparagingly in his dictionary of 1755: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” In 1877 Quaker Oats registered as the first trademark for a breakfast cereal. Quaker was also the first food company to include a recipe on its box (in 1891).

Congee

Congee is a rice porridge eaten in many Asian countries. (Called congee in English — derived from the Portuguese “canja” and before that from Tamil or Malay — it goes by many other names as well.) Rice is cooked for a long time in a large amount of water or broth so that it disintegrates. Congee is usually a savoury breakfast dish, being topped with vegetables, fish, salted duck eggs, or any number of other toppings and condiments. It is considered an excellent food for the ill and for infants. “The earliest references to congee appear around 206 B.C. in China, but it’s believed to originate up to 1,000 years earlier in the Zhou dynasty.”

Grits

Now ubiquitous in the South, grits originated with a North American tribe called the Muscogee. According to Culture Trip, “Before ships set sail for the New World in the 17th century, the native peoples in North America were already eating a soft, mashed corn (or maize) – a dish that was introduced to European explorers in 1584. During surveillance of the new lands in present-day Roanoke, North Carolina, Sir Walter Raleigh and his men dined with the local Natives. One of the men, Arthur Barlowe, wrote about the ‘very white, faire, and well tasted’ boiled corn served by their hosts. Less than two decades later, this year-round staple – called ‘rockahomine’ by the Natives, later to be shortened to ‘hominy’ by the colonists – was offered to the new settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, when they arrived in 1607. The Natives taught the colonists how to make the dish, and it quickly became a part of the American diet.” Over the centuries, grits became popular in every Southern state and of course shrimp and grits became a classic combo.

I hope to delve into other types of porridge in future posts. What did you have for breakfast? 🙂