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Gingerbread Parkin
Rub half a pound of butter and half a pound of fresh lard into four pounds of oatmeal, or flour and oatmeal mixed. Add half a pound of brown sugar and an ounce of ground ginger. Mix three pounds and a half of treacle with a cupful of new milk; stir these into the oatmeal. etc., to make a stiff paste, bake in a moderate oven, either in oiled tins or dripping-tins, till brightly browned, i.e. about twenty minutes if baked in patty-pans, and one hour and a half in large dishes. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A Yorkshire parkin scaled for a large household: nearly eight pounds of dry goods before the treacle goes in. Most of the work of modernising it is arithmetic.
- Scale it down firstAs written this makes something like 9-10 lb of parkin. Quarter everything — 2 oz butter, 2 oz lard, 1 lb oatmeal/flour, 2 oz brown sugar, about a tablespoon of ginger, 14 oz treacle, a splash of milk — which is roughly one large square tin's worth.
- TreacleBritish black treacle, or unsulphured molasses. The proportion here is very high (nearly a pound of treacle to a pound of dry goods), which is what makes parkin dark, sticky and almost damp rather than cakey.
- Oatmeal, not oatsMedium or fine oatmeal. Pinhead (steel-cut) oatmeal is coarser than you want here. Rolled porridge oats give a flabbier, flakier crumb; if that is all you have, pulse them in a processor first. A half-and-half mix of oatmeal and plain flour, as the recipe allows, is the easier version.
- No raising agentThe recipe includes none, and none is implied — this is a dense, chewy, almost biscuit-textured parkin. Many modern versions add a teaspoon or so of bicarbonate of soda, which reacts with the acidic treacle and lifts it into cake territory. Leaving it out is not an error in the original, just an older style.
- Moderate oven350F / 175C. With this much treacle the surface browns and can scorch well before the middle sets, so watch it after the first half hour and drop to 325F if it is darkening fast.
- VesselsA dripping-tin is a shallow roasting pan; patty-pans are small tartlet or bun tins. The stated times hold up reasonably — 20 minutes for small tins, up to 1½ hours for a deep slab — but test with a skewer rather than trusting the clock.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, as opposed to milk that had stood and soured. Warm it slightly to loosen the treacle before mixing.
- Let it sitParkin is better after three or four days wrapped in greaseproof paper in a tin. The oatmeal softens and the treacle draws moisture back through the crumb; eaten warm from the oven it tastes raw and gritty by comparison.
Parkin belongs to the oatmeal-eating north of England — Yorkshire above all, with strong Lancashire claims too — where oats grew where wheat would not and treacle arrived cheaply by the ton once cane sugar refining expanded in the nineteenth century. It is tied firmly to early November: parkin was the Bonfire Night cake, made in slabs for 5 November and for the older Yorkshire "Parkin Sunday" or Cakin' Night that fell around the same season. The name's origin is unsettled; it is often said to derive from the personal name Perkin, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. In Cassell's, the enormous quantities and the note of probable cost — 2s. 6d. for the lot — say plainly what it was for: a cheap, keeping cake cut into squares and handed out to a crowd.