Muesli
of one form or another is a breakfast staple for many – especially those who
lean towards the healthy option (whatever that means.) It is, of course, as I
am sure you will agree, a pleasant way to enjoy your morning oats, and is
especially useful if hot porridge is not your style, or it is a hot summer
morning.
The
Oxford English Dictionary agrees that
oats are the usual base, in its definition of the dish as “a mixture of cereals
(esp. rolled oats), fresh or dried fruit, nuts, etc., typically eaten with milk
at breakfast.” It is always satisfying when the OED agrees with one’s own concept of a dish, is it not? So, imagine
my surprise, confusion, and ultimate delight when I followed the etymological
trail to try to uncover the connection with oats. The explanation given in the
OED is that it is “originally a German regional (Swiss) diminutive formation
< Mues , regional variant of
German Mus stew, stewed fruit (see
moose n.1). So – no mention of oats, only of fruit. And moose? What has muesli
to do with the North American elk? Nothing, thankfully, as it turns out. The
noun also means, or used to mean, “pottage; stewed vegetables; a dish of this”
– which those of you with an interest in medieval and early modern food will
recognize in the name of the dish apple-moyse
or moise. It would be so easy to
wander off right now on an apple-moyse tangent, but I am confused enough, so we
will enjoy that particular delight tomorrow. I immediately wondered if
moose/moyse/moise was related to mousse,
but it appears this is not the case, the name of this light frothy dish being
related to the French name for a mass of champagne bubbles.
So,
several etymological byways later, where is the oat connection? The first supporting quotation for the OED’s entry on muesli specifically
references the form we know as birchermuesli:
1926: “M. O.
Bircher-Benner & M. E. Bircher Fruit
Dishes & Raw Vegetables iv. 29
This dish..is popularly known as ‘Birchermüesli’.”
The
author of the book is Maximilian Bircher-Benner, an influential Swiss physician
and nutritionist who created the dish (around the end of the nineteenth
century) for the use of patients of his sanitorium in Zurich, and luckily for
us, his book contains the original recipe.
RAW FRUIT PORRIDGE (Bircher Muesli)
The
recipe given is the portion for one person.
1.
Apple
Muesli.
1. Apples.
Two or three small apples or one large one. Clean them by rubbing with a dry
cloth. Do not take away the skin, core, or pips.
2. Nuts.
Walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds – one tablespoonful.
3. Rolled Oats.*
A level tablespoonful previously soaked in 3 tablespoonfuls of water for 12
hours.
4. Lemon Juice.
The juice of half a lemon**
5. Top milk
(T.T) and honey or sweet condensed milk
(Nestlé’s) One tablespoonful.
Preparation:
First mix condensed
milk (or top milk and honey) and juice of lemon with soaked rolled oats. Then
grate the apples including the skin, core, and pips vigorously into the mixture
on a two-way grater, and whilst doing so, stir continually. In this way the
apple pulp is covered by the mixture and thus is prevented from getting brown
in contact with the air. It looks white and appetizing. The dish should be
prepared immediately before being put on the table. The grated nuts or almonds
(1 tablespoonful) which are sprinkled over the dish increase the protein
content and fat. The dish is served fresh, before anything else, and is not
intended as a dessert. The fact that it is cold is never harmful as long as the
muesli is well chewed and thus sufficiently warmed in the mouth. For those of a
nervous disposition it may be warmed, but not above 95o F, as its
nutritive value would be impaired.
This dish is especially
suitable as a wholesome breakfast and supper for children from the age of two,
for sick people with digestive disorders and for healthy people who wish to
remain healthy.
I
there, in that original recipe, we have the explanation of the etymology – the
dish contains as much or more apple as it does oats.
2 comments:
Here in Germany, there's still Apfelmus (apple sauce) and Zwetschgenmus/Pflaumenmus (a pureed plum preserve that is often used as the top layer of a type of yeasted sheet cake, maybe best translated as plum butter (in the apple butter sense)?)
This looks delicious. I came up with a similar recipe that includes cherries or berries sans the oats. It's best if the almonds are coarsely ground and served with a large pat of salted butter on top.
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