To Prepare the Husked or Pearled Wheat for Frumenty

Put it in a hot oven early in the day and let it stay as the heat cools until next morning; or put it in a pan of hot water on the hob or stove for the same period or longer, or boil it up on the stove for 10 minutes and then plunge it quickly into a hay-box, or into a fireless cooker. The aim is the same—to stew or ‘cree’ the wheat in water for 24 hours, at the end of that time if the grains are not burst and set in a thick jelly they will be if the contents of the pot are boiled up for five minutes or perhaps a little longer: it depends on how far they are already cooked. Wheat thus prepared is known as Frumenty wheat, and is thus designated in recipes, which vary very much, from the plain frumenty wheat eaten as a breakfast food with milk and honey or treacle to the richness of the following recipes. There is one point that may interest many: frumenty wheat contains the whole grain with the exception of the extreme outer husk, and therefore is a good source of Vitamins B and A; with milk and honey it is a perfect food, and it was probably the food of the young man of the Iron Age whose skeleton was dug up during the excavations at Woodhenge, Salisbury Plain in 1927–28. Of this Sir Arthur Keith says: ‘The unworn state of the teeth, the reduced size of the ascending ramus of the lower jaw and the slight muscular impression show that the muscles of mastication were not used, and that the food was free from grit. There is not a trace of caries; all the teeth are sound.’

And of a second skeleton, a man over 40, belonging to the Early Bronze Age, he says: ‘Considering the nature of the food in the Early Bronze period, we should expect to find the teeth deeply worn. His teeth are only slightly worn, indicating a prepared soft dietary.’

And in the Bible of 1551, the following appears (Leviticus xxiii, 14): ‘And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor frumenty of new corne, untill the selfe same daye that ye have brought an offeringe unto your God.’

It does not seem as if there is any exaggerating in claiming frumenty as our oldest national dish. It can be made of pearl barley as well as of ‘pearled’ wheat.