Millet Pudding.

There is much interest these days in "alternative" grains - alternative to wheat, that is - wheat historically being the "gold standard" in most of Europe. Wheat is certainly the best for making bread, if you like your bread in the form of lighter well-risen loaves, because of its hight gluten content. Other grains and cereals are useful for pottages and porridges (which are variations of the same word), and coarse heavy breads, or flat breads and pancakes, and some of these (such as oats and rye, for example) formed the bulk of the diet for the les well-off folk of most of Europe for millenia.

The less-well known grains and cereals such as millet were known by the cookery book writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (whoby definition were writing for the better-educated and better-off folk), as the following extracts show:

Millet.—This is much used in eastern countries, as food for horses and cattle, and to fatten poultry. It is also sometimes used by the peasants of Europe for bread. It is, however, more fashionable to make it into puddings; and some prefer it in this way to rice. In America, or at least in New England, it would be hardly worth cultivating.
The young house-keeper, or, Thoughts on food and cookery, By William Andrus Alcott, 1838.

Bread made of millet, if eaten when warm, is pretty palatable, but when cold, it becomes dry and crumbly. Besides, though nutritive when boiled, it is not so in bread, but becomes a very powerful astringent. According to Pliny, however, it would appear, that millet was in very general use as food in Italy among the peasantry. " There is no grain," he says, " more heavy, or which swells more in baking." Probably the Italians had some method for counteracting its astringent properties. It is said to be an excellent leaven, and has been recommended for malting.
The Complete Cook, J.M.Sanderson 1846

There is a dearth of recipes for millet in early cookery books, but here are a a few that might tempt those of you interested in Trying a "different" grain.

MIllet Pudding.
Wash four tablespoonfuls of the seed, boil it in a quart of milk with grated nutmeg and lemon-peel, and stir in, when a little cooled, an ounce of fresh butter; sweeten with brown sugar, and add the well-beaten yolks of four, and the whites of two eggs, and a glass of wine or spirits. Bake it in a buttered dish.

A Millet Pudding.
Spread a quarter of a pound of butter at the bottom of a dilh ; lay into it six ounces of millet, and a quarter oT a pound of fugar. When going to the oven, pour over it three pints of milk.
The London complete art of cookery containing the most approved receipts ...1787