Frumenty…

I mentioned frumenty a little while ago while I was writing about Guy Fawkes Night traditions, and it’s the sort of word which really is not in common parlance. it’s the sort of word I might get right in a quiz when no-one else knows it! It’s the sort of word which crops up in a Thomas hardy novel and I would feel smug because I know what it is… and then today I heard it twice!I was preparing some work for the English conversation class and thought we would look at a video of someone making a Christmas pudding, and a chef I was watching said that the pudding originated from frumenty… I’m not actually sure that is so… but then tonight watching Masterchef, another chef was doing a savoury frumenty to serve with octopus!

Frumenty I made from grain of cereal, often wheat but it can be barley, which is boiled in milk and sweetened and with added spices and sometimes dried fruit such as currants or raisins; in effect it was like a porridge, but with whole grains not crushed or rolled grains. If you want to  know more about it and have a look at some old recipes this is interesting:

http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/frumenty.html

Now to my mind that cannot have then become a pudding, which was originally I believe a mixture of fruit and meat and fat and flour, boiled in a cloth or bag… we now use a pudding basin, but the principal is the same. I also don’t think you could call grain boiled in a savoury stock with vegetables and non-sweet spices a frumenty…  but on the other hand, I’m not a famous chef on TV… so what do I know?!