Racahout is a compound consisting principally of sugar, arrowroot, rice-flour, and French chocolate. It makes a most appetizing gruel, and is quite nutritious. Racahout des Arabes is imported largely from France. It may be obtained at any first-class grocery store.
INDIAN-MEAL GRUEL
2 Tablespoons of corn-meal.
1 Tablespoon of flour.
1 Teaspoon of salt.
1 Teaspoon of sugar.
1 Quart of boiling water.
1 Cup of milk.
Mix the corn-meal, flour, salt, and sugar into a thin paste with cold water, and pour into it the boiling water. Cook it in a double boiler for three hours. No less time than that will cook the corn-meal thoroughly. Then add the milk, and it is ready to serve.
Use the fine granulated meal which comes in paste-board packages, prepared for the table, and may be bought of almost any grocer.
MUSH AND PORRIDGE
Mush is meal or grain cooked in water to the consistency of rather thin pudding. Porridge is like mush, only thinner. The most important point connected with the preparation of these is thoroughness in the cooking. Made as they generally are of coarsely ground or of rolled grains, they need long boiling to soften the cellulose and to cook the starch properly.
Oatmeal. Oatmeal should be cooked for at least three hours in a double boiler. It is at its best prepared the day before it is needed, and then reheated as it is wanted. If it is done in this way, the flavor is fine, and there is no danger that the grains will be hard. When taken from the kettle, the oatmeal should be of the consistency to pour, and on cooling it ought to form into a tender, jelly-like pudding. Sometimes oatmeal is cooked so that the grains are whole and separate, but it is not easily digested so, and lacks the delicious flavor which long cooking gives.