ON THE MEANING OF “PORRIDGE”

Today Janice picked me up for breakfast. I ordered a bowl of oatmeal, which reminded me of how at school in England I fell in love with porridge - even if it was lumpy, it had the advantage of filling the belly of an active 15-year old. Over the next decades and well into my current nineties.I have remained addicted to a steaming bowl of porridge. So at breakfast I asked Janice whether she knew the origin of the word and that led us to check it out on Google. So, now, we want to share with you what was found. You may want to keep it as a memento on the bulletin board even in the kitchen. Good luck and good porridge from David!

H D Kirk

Porridge (also spelled porage, parritch, etc. is a dish made by boiling oats (rolled, crushed, or steel cut) or other cereal meals in water, milk, or both. It is usually served hot in a bowl or dish. Other grains or legumes may be used, although dishes prepared with other ingredients are often referred to by other names, such as polenta or grits.

Oat and semolina porridge are the most popular varieties in many countries. In addition to oats, cereal meals used for porridge include rice, wheat, barley, and corn. Legumes such as peasemeal can also be used to make porridge. Gruel is similar to porridge but is much more like a drink; it has a very thin consistency and is made with water. It was served in Victorian workhouses as a standard meal.

Porridge was a traditional food in much of Northern Europe and Russia. Barley was a common grain used, though other grains and yellow peas could be used, depending on local conditions. It was primarily a savory dish, with a variety of meats, root crops, vegetables, and herbs added for flavor. Porridge could be cooked in a large metal kettle over hot coals, or heated in a cheaper earthenware container by adding hot stones until boiling hot. Until leavened bread and baking ovens became commonplace in Europe, porridge was a typical means of preparing cereal crops for the table. It was also commonly used as prison food for inmates in the UK prison system and so "doing porridge" became a slang term for a sentence in prison.

In many modern cultures, porridge is eaten as a breakfast dish, often with the addition of salt, butter, sugar, milk, or cream, depending on regional preferences. In the English speaking Caribbean islands it is common to add cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar and almond essence to the oats, water and milk. Some manufacturers of breakfast cereal, such as Scott’s Porage Oats, sell ready-made versions. Porridge is one of the easiest ways to digest grains or legumes, and is used traditionally in many cultures as a food to nurse the sick back to health. It is also commonly eaten by athletes in training.

ORIGIN – a variant of earlier poddidge, akin to pottage

New York City Years

In my long-ago and even in retrospect mostly engaging, university days, there occurred events that retain the quality of important memory markers.  I start with the spring of 1953 when I left Cornell University- with a Master’s degree, earned in 1950, and a doctorate obtained three years later. Memories of those years retain both scary and pleasant elements.

After my discharge from CPS and a NYC part-time job as a furniture finisher, my young wife having prepared a little apartment for us on West 23^rd Street, we spent a summer working on a Maryland farm, after which I managed to enroll at CCNY as an adult student and so was able to take sociology courses that shaped my interest toward grad work. For four years (1944-48) I was an undergraduate at the 137^th Street campus in Harlem,  a location that became as important for my education as the course offerings at the college.

Our fifth floor walk-up apartment on 109^th Street and Columbus Avenue, just one block south of the border of Harlem, was a neat and quiet haven in the noisy neighborhood with its “slum culture”. If the residents tended to have it all “hang out”, with their private lives exposed through uncurtained windows, for me the often memorable scenes afforded glimpses into the ordinary day-by-day life in the tenements.

  

I, greenhorn student and new-eyes-observer of social life in the raw, took with zest to our street’s sounds, smells, and ever-changing dramas. They soon became my practicum for testing abstractions and concepts presented by my new discipline. Looking back from those learning years, I realize with a start that I must, while I have time and memory, record what I can. With daughter Lisa’s help, those bits and pieces may yet be of some value in connecting me with “you all” when we can’t communicate any more.

It was during the New York City years 1944-48 that among memorable adventures were two summers of working on the farm owned and run by friends in Maryland. There I was put in charge of the tool shed, sharpening axes and mending. And it was there that I had the luck to become acquainted with the much maligned  (“pro-Soviet traitor”) Alger Hiss and also learned both the rewards and punishments of Southern racist attitudes toward blacks.