Why? Well cooked the day before, and eaten with milk and sugar, all children liked porridge. But the mothers held up their hands. Milk! Who could give milk—or sugar either, for that matter? Of course, if you could give them milk and sugar, no wonder! They might eat it then, even if it was a bit burnt. Porridge was an awful thing to burn in old pots if you left it a minute; and if you set the pot flat on its bottom instead of holding it all to one side to keep the burnt place away from the flame, it would “ketch” at once. An’ then if you’d happened to cook fish or “stoo” in the pot for dinner, there was a kind of taste come out in the porridge. It was more than they could bear to see children who was ’ungry, mind you, pushin’ their food away or ’eavin’ at it. So it usually ended in a slice of “bread and marge” all round, and a drink of tea, which was the breakfast they were accustomed to. One woman wound up a long and patient explanation of why she did not give her husband porridge with: “An’, besides, my young man ’e say, Ef you gives me that stinkin’ mess, I’ll throw it at yer.” Those were the reasons. It is true that to make porridge a good pot which is not burnt, and which is not used for “fish or stoo,” is needed. It is also true that to eat porridge with the best results milk is needed. If neither of these necessaries can be obtained, porridge is apt to be burnt or half cooked, and is in either case very unpalatable. Children do not thrive on food they loathe, and men who are starting for a hard day’s work refuse even to consider the question. What is the mother to do? Of course, she gives them food they do like and can eat—bread and margarine or bread and jam, with a drop of hot weak tea. The women are very fond of Quaker oats when they can afford the luxury, and if milk is provided to drink with it. They can cook a little portion in a tin enamelled cup, and so escape the family saucepan.
Another difficulty which dogs the path of the Lambeth housekeeper is, either that there is no oven or only a gas oven which requires a good deal of gas, or that the stove oven needs much fuel to heat it. Once a week, for the Sunday dinner, the plunge is taken. Homes where there is no oven send out to the bakehouse on that occasion. The rest of the week is managed on cold food, or the hard-worked saucepan and frying-pan are brought into play. The certainty of an economical stove or fireplace is out of the reach of the poor. They are often obliged to use old-fashioned and broken ranges and grates which devour coal with as little benefit to the user as possible. They are driven to cook by gas, which ought to be an excellent way of cooking, but under the penny-in-the-slot system it is a way which tends to underdone food.