[Sca-cooks] Workhouse Diet

[Johnna Holloway]

"Was the Victorian workhouse diet
sufficient for a 9-year-old boy? A group of British researchers — two
dietitians, a pediatrician and a historian — asked just that question in
a study published online Dec. 17 in The British Medical Journal."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/health/30diet.html?ref=science

If you read the article in the NYT, you'll see that it mentions 17th
century recipes for porridge. Well in the original BMJ article
that section reads:
"For our analysis we used a recipe for water gruel taken from a 17th
century English cookery text.[5] Unlike the gruel described by
Dickens, the gruel described in Pereira’s workhouse *diet*s is
substantial, not thin (each pint contained 1.25 oz of the best Berwick
oatmeal).[5]

The original footnote reads:
5. Matterer JL. 17th century English recipes. How to make water-gruel.
2002. www.godecookery.com/engrec/engrec120.html.

So in reality they seemed to have used the recipe off Master Huen's 
website. The text of the BMJ article is up at: http://tinyurl.com/8tdml3

Johnnae