Porridge

Porridge is oats that have been boiled in water or milk until they stop looking like oats and start looking like porridge.^[1] It is eaten at breakfast by people who want to feel that they have made at least one sensible decision before eight o’clock.

Porridge is grey, a colour it chose so that it would never be the most exciting thing on the table, a position it has held at every breakfast since records began.

Temperature

Porridge has two temperatures: too hot to eat and cold enough to lay bricks with. Between them is a “just right” phase lasting approximately one spoonful, first identified in folklore and later confirmed by a twelve-year study that produced one very good spoonful and a great deal of cement.^[2]

Stirring

In Scotland porridge is traditionally stirred with a wooden stick called a spurtle, and folklore holds that it must be stirred clockwise. A breakaway school of anticlockwise stirrers maintains that the porridge cannot tell. A 1979 blind trial confirmed that the porridge could not tell, but that the stirrers could, and that they minded.^[3]

Toppings

• Honey: sweet.
• Salt: traditional.
• Fruit: healthy.
• Nothing: brave.

See also

• Chair – should also be just right
• Minute – porridge takes several, then several more to cool

References

1. Oat, O. (1995). Grey and Good for You. Breakfast Press.
2. Lukewarm, L. (2012). “The Spoonful Window”. Journal of Breakfast 7.
3. Spurtle Society (1979). “Clockwise: A Blind Trial”. Results disputed by both directions.