EastneyEnder said:
Quoted message said:Of course cooked oatmeal is porridge, but not all porridge is oatmeal.
Wait..... To a Brit like me - and possibly Australians as well - there *is*
only one porridge, and that's made from oats.
When we boil rolled oats [labelled Porridge Oats in the supermarket] with
milk or water and add salt, sugar or honey to make a gloopy breakfast dish,
it is called Porridge. We don't call it anything else... and if you mention
Porridge to a Brit, s/he will know you mean the stuff made from oats that
you have for breakfast. In modern British English usage, that's the only
porridge there is.
My English grandmother and my father, raised by English parents and having spent
3 years in England during the war, used the terms oatmeal, porridge and oatmeal
porridge interchangeably. Oatmeal here in Canada is sold as oatmeal, coming as
instant, quick cooking, large flake or steel cut. Cream of Wheat and Red River
are both sold as hot cereal.
Quoted message said:So technically speaking, "a porridge" can be made from other substances in
some places outside the UK... but inside the UK and in some other
English-speaking places, "porridge" is only made from oats.
Oxford English Dictionary:
porridge n. food made by boiling oatmeal or cereal in water or milk
...and if you ask for "oatmeal" in the UK, you will be given finely ground -
almost powdered - uncooked oats.
Especially when you back it up with a definition that indicates it doesn't have
to be oatmeal. :-)
I think that a lot of people assume that most people associate the word porridge
with oatmeal because it by far the most common. In the hot cereals section in
the grocery stores here we have usually one McCanns steel cut oats, at least
three variations of rolled oats by at least three different suppliers, and then
one row each of minute Cream of Wheat and the 8 minute stuff, and a row of Red
River, and sometimes one other. Basically, the non Oatmeal porridges account for
less than 10% of the hot cereal choices.
Let's face it, a lot of people just don't like porridge period. There are those
of us who consider oatmeal to be a tasty and healthy breakfast food, and then
there is a smaller number who like Cream of Wheat.
