Cereal with Fruit (1896)
Reader ratingsFannie Farmer’s Cereal with Fruit of 1896: a wheat breakfast cereal boiled five minutes, steamed half an hour, then stirred through with dates and served with cream.
- Recipe makes
- About 4 cups, 4 servings
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
About 5 minutes to bring the water to the boil, 5 minutes of boiling over direct heat and 30 minutes over simmering water; pit and cut the dates while it steams.
Hot wheat cereal with chopped dates and a pour of cream.
The story behind the recipe
Cereal with Fruit is a wheat cereal steamed for half an hour, with dates stirred through it at the end and cream poured over. Fannie Farmer printed it in 1896 in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, just below her table for cooking cereals, and said it would do “for breakfast, or as a simple dessert.” It belongs to the same shelf of packaged cereals as the bowl Horace Fletcher chose at Yale in 1903, and shows what a cook did when plain cereal wasn’t enough.
What was “Wheat Germ”?
Farmer’s cereal is “Wheat Germ,” with capitals, and her table files it beside Wheatlet, Wheatena and Germea: granular wheat cereals that all take a cup to 3¾ cups of water and thirty minutes. Elsewhere in the chapter she lists the wheat preparations of the day, among them Wheatena, Wheatlet, Wheat Grits and Pettijohns. Her “Wheat Germ” belongs with these cooked breakfast meals, so the loose wheat germ sold today for sprinkling is the wrong thing to buy.
Read more about this recipe
A dearer bowl than Fletcher’s
Cream cost extra at the Waldorf in New York, where in 1896 Wheatena or oatmeal was 25 cents plain and 35 cents “with Cream” (about $14 today, by US consumer prices, Minneapolis Fed). Fletcher’s whole day at Yale, cereal, milk and maple sugar, came to eleven cents. Russell H. Chittenden wrote that Fletcher picked his three foods himself as variety enough for his needs, and nothing in the laboratory’s account suggests fruit or cream. Read What Did Horace Fletcher Eat at Yale in 1903? for the rest of the Yale week, from the weighing to the gymnasium.
Making it today
Farina, the plain granular wheat cereal sold in boxes today, is our stand-in for Farmer’s Wheat Germ. We keep her amounts, her trick of wetting the cereal in cold water before it meets the boiling water, so it doesn’t lump, and her half hour in a double boiler. Her half pound of dates is weighed after pitting here, our reading of “stoned, and cut in pieces.” Light cream is our choice for her plain “cream.” For the bowl closest to Fletcher’s own, the Rolled Oat Mush (1896) comes from the line above it in the same table.
Cereal with Fruit.
¾ cup Wheat Germ. ¾ cup cold water. 2½ cups boiling water. 1 teaspoon salt. ½ lb. dates, stoned, and cut in pieces.
Mix cereal, salt, and cold water; add to boiling water placed on front of range. Boil five minutes, steam in double boiler thirty minutes; stir in dates, and serve with cream. To serve for breakfast, or as a simple dessert.
Recipe makes: About 4 cups, 4 servings
Ingredients
For about 4 cups, 4 servings. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for about 4 cups, 4 servings.
- Farina (wheat cereal)3/4 cup
- Cold water3/4 cup
- Boiling water2 1/2 cups
- Salt1 tsp
- Pitted dates, cut in pieces0.5 lb
- Light cream, to serve1/2 cup
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- ¾ cup farina (wheat cereal)
- ¾ cup cold water
- 2½ cups boiling water
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ lb pitted dates, cut in pieces
- ½ cup light cream, to serve
Equipment
Double boiler, or a heatproof bowl that sits snugly over a saucepan
Kettle
Small bowl
Wooden spoon
Instructions
Pour a few inches of water into the bottom of the double boiler and bring it to a simmer; the top pan or bowl should sit above the water without touching it.
In the small bowl, stir the farina (wheat cereal) and salt into the cold water until smooth.
Put the boiling water in the top pan, set it directly over medium-high heat and bring it back to the boil. Stir in the wet farina and boil for 5 minutes, stirring all the time so it stays smooth.
Set the top pan over the simmering water, cover and steam for 30 minutes, stirring now and then and topping up the water below if it runs low. It is ready when it is thick and smooth, with no raw, gritty grains left.
Stir in the pitted dates, cut in pieces, and heat them through for a minute or two.
Spoon into bowls and pour on the light cream.
Nutrition
330calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 4 cups, 4 servings
- Servings
- 4
Estimated per serving (4) from USDA FoodData Central values for enriched farina, Medjool-type dates and light cream, counting all the cream as eaten.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Farmer’s own batch, for about four bowls. Halved, it still needs the full 30 minutes over the water.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
The cereal, water, salt, dates and method are Farmer’s; farina for her Wheat Germ, the pitted weight of the dates and light cream are ours. Her “front of range” was the hottest part of a coal or wood stove; any burner on medium-high does the same job. Whole milk can stand in for the cream, as Fletcher’s diet had it. Chill leftovers within 2 hours and reheat them on the stove with a little water, to 165°F (74°C).
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Fannie Merritt Farmer, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Boston, 1896), Cereal with Fruit
See the original pages (scan at Internet Archive) (opens in a new tab)
Recipe details
- Course
- Breakfast
- Region
- American
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1890s
- Main ingredient
- Grains & riceFruit
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- Everyday meal