Pottage without herbs.
Others desire to have pottage without any herbs at all, and then you must only take oatmeal beaten, and good store of onions, and put them in, and boil them together; and thus doing you must take a greater quantity of oatmeal then before.
- Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife. Michael Best, ed. McGill-Queens University Press: Montreal. 1986. pp. 74-6.
Oats and onions? What could be simpler…..rolled oats simply will not do, though. Whole oat groats (whole food store or horse trough. Just joking about the horse chow…..but those are what real oats look like)
Onions in traces - Allerton house, August 2012
assorted sizes of oat groats
whole oat groats with husks
Tags: 17th century recipe, cooking, Gerard Dou, Markham, oats, onion traces, onions
I believe it was Karen Hess who made the connection of corn groats to grits