Oats

Oats can be grown in any part of England, but were particularly suited to the colder and wetter areas of the north and west. Perhaps because the finely-ground meal soon became sour, particularly if damp, the form of oatmeal generally used in the kitchen appears to have been groats, where the grain was coarsely milled, probably a little larger than today’s pinhead oatmeal.¹²⁶ For thickening, these could be ground to dust in a mortar. In peasant households, oatmeal was ideal for making a variety of different pottages, such as flummery, sowans, llith, siot, crowdy and brewis which continued to be made well into the twentieth century, as well as for gruel, the medieval word for oatmeal porridge.¹²⁷ There are no medieval recipes for this staple food, since methods of its preparation were so well known. The traditional method of making it involved bringing a pot of water to the boil before stirring in the groats, thus reducing the time for which it had to be stirred.