1857: porridge and pottage Jan 15, 2020

'Pottage' can technically be used describe anything which is cooked in a pot, though usually it is used to refer to a stew, like 'peas pottage'. In some cases, these would be thickened with barley or oats, which eventually led not only to the creation of oatmeal as a dish, but of 'porridge' as a variant of 'pottage'. These are both doublets of 'potage' (soup) which was adopted from French in the 16th century.

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