Oatmeal Gems
1 pinch Salt, 2 cups Rolled Oats, 1/4 cup Sugar, ½ cup sour Milk, Flour, sufficient. 1 teaspoonful The Great "Arm & Hammer" Soda. 1 Egg, 2 teaspoonfuls Butter or Lard, Mix the rolled oats with sufficient cold water to soak them and set away in earthen bowl or crock over night. In the morning dissolve The Great "Arm & Hammer" Soda (or Saleratus) in the sour milk (or buttermilk), beat the egg and sugar together until light, and pour all into bowl with oats, adding enough wheat flour to make a soft batter; then put in the melted butter or lard. Mix thoroughly. Bake in greased hot gem molds. Molasses or syrup may be used instead of the sugar.
An overnight-soaked oat batter leavened by the reaction between baking soda and sour milk. The vague flour quantity and the preheated gem pan are the two things to get right.
- Gem moldsGem pans are heavy cast-iron muffin pans, and the recipe means them to be greased and heated empty before the batter goes in, which sets the outside crust immediately. A cast-iron muffin pan or a standard 12-cup metal muffin tin both work; preheat it in the oven and grease it just before filling.
- Oven heatNo oven temperature is given; the recipe specifies only that the molds be hot. A hot oven, around 425F, for roughly 18 to 20 minutes suits this batter: bake until the tops spring back and the edges pull from the pan.
- "Flour, sufficient"This is genuinely open-ended, since it depends on how much water the oats absorbed overnight. Expect somewhere between 1 1/2 and 2 cups of wheat flour, added gradually until the batter is soft, thick and just droppable from a spoon.
- Sour milkPeriod sour milk was raw milk left to clabber, which is not the same as modern refrigerated milk gone off. Use buttermilk, which the recipe itself offers as an alternative, or milk soured with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar per cup and left ten minutes.
- Saleratus and sodaSaleratus was an older potassium- or sodium-bicarbonate product; the modern equivalent is ordinary baking soda, measured level. One teaspoon to 1 1/2 cups buttermilk is on the generous side, and a scant teaspoon will avoid any soapy aftertaste.
- Work fast once mixedThe soda begins reacting with the acid in the buttermilk the moment they meet, so mix, fill and bake without pause. Batter left standing on the counter loses its lift and the gems come out dense.
- Rolled oatsOld-fashioned rolled oats are what is wanted here. Quick oats will soak into mush overnight and give a pasty crumb; steel-cut oats will not soften enough in cold water.
- YieldRoughly a dozen standard muffin-sized gems, possibly more depending on how much flour the batter takes. They are best warm from the pan, as oat gems firm up considerably once cool.
Gems were the standard American quick bread of the later nineteenth century, baked in the cast-iron gem pan, and they existed in every grain a household had on hand: graham gems, rye gems, corn gems, oatmeal gems. The pairing of sour milk with saleratus or soda was the everyday leavening of the period, cheap and reliable in kitchens where a dairy soured its own milk daily, and it is exactly why this recipe appears in an Arm & Hammer promotional booklet. Church & Dwight built its business on that reaction, and the little recipe pamphlets it distributed were meant to keep a box of soda in constant use. The overnight cold soak reflects the older habit of softening whole grains before baking, a step that predates the fine-cut quick oats of the twentieth century and one that still improves the texture of an oat batter.