Home › The Principles of Cookery › SCOTCH OATMEAL CAKES (another way) (Following directions are given)
SCOTCH OATMEAL CAKES (another way) (Following directions are given)
The following directions are given by one writer as the result of some experience and study. 1.--Let the oatmeal be of medium size in the grain. If coarse oatmeal be used, the cakes will not bear kneading out to the proper thinness, but will break in pieces; if the finest be used, the cakes will be tough, not crisp, as they ought to be. 2.--Use cold water only in making the dough. If hot or lukewarm water be used, the cakes will also be tough, and quite wanting in the peculiar sweetness that cakes made with cold water have. The use of fine oatmeal and hot water certainly makes the work easier to the person preparing the cakes, and also produces a better-looking article, but just as surely makes the cakes much less pleasant to eat. 3.--Use no fat, nor carbonate of soda, nor anything but oatmeal, cold water, and just as much salt as is used in the making of bread from flour. Fat and carbonate of soda both cause the cakes to be shorter; but both, especially the former, have a great tendency to produce heartburn and other undesirable results in the eater. Cakes properly made do not require any such devices to make them very pleasant eating. 4.--Knead up the dough as quickly as possible, and make no more dough at a time than is enough for one cake, which cut into three or four sections for convenience of handling. If the dough is made in a lump for a number of cakes, those that are baked last will not be so crisp and sweet as the first baked. The size of the cake will be determined by the diameter of the hot-plate or girdle on which it is to be baked, but cakes of small diameter are more easily made by persons unaccustomed to the work. 5.--Make the cakes thin--as little over an eight of an inch as possible. If rolled out thicker than that they will not have the nice crispness that a good oat-cake always has. 6.--Bake the one side on the hot-plate over the fire just as much as will serve to stiffen the cake sufficiently to bear its own weight when set on edge in the toaster before the fire. The more the baking is done before the fire the better. Lastly, do not eat them hot, and keep them, until used, in a perfectly dry and, if possible, rather warm place.
This is a method rather than a formula — the writer gives no quantities at all, only the rules that make oatcakes crisp instead of tough. A few translations are needed before it works on a modern hob.
- The hinge: cold water, worked fastEverything in the piece turns on using cold water and mixing only enough dough for one cake at a time. The writer holds that hot or lukewarm water makes a tough cake lacking the sweetness of one made with cold water, and that when dough is made in a lump the later cakes bake less crisp. Mix, roll and cook each cake before starting the next.
- What "medium oatmeal" meansBuy oatmeal ground medium — sometimes sold as medium pinhead or medium ground oatmeal. Rolled or instant oats will not do; they are steamed and flaked, and produce a pasty dough that neither rolls thin nor crisps.
- No quantities givenThe original gives none. As a working starting point, about 1 cup (5 oz) medium oatmeal to 4-5 tablespoons cold water makes one cake; add the water a spoonful at a time until the meal just coheres. Salt "as in bread" is roughly 1.5-2 percent of the weight of the meal, so about a scant 1/2 teaspoon per cup.
- Girdle means griddleA girdle is the flat Scottish iron plate set over the fire. A heavy cast-iron griddle or dry frying pan over moderate heat does the same job. No fat in the pan, and no fat in the dough -- the writer is emphatic about that, and the cakes do not need it.
- The toaster before the fireThe second stage dried the cake out in radiant heat, standing on edge on a hinged toasting frame. In a modern kitchen, move the half-cooked cakes to a low oven until dry, pale and brittle right through -- judge by the cake rather than by a timer. The original is clear that the more of the cooking done in radiant heat the better, so this is where the crispness comes from, not the griddle.
- ThicknessAs little over an eighth of an inch as possible, per the original; rolled thicker, the cake loses its crispness. Work on a surface dusted with dry oatmeal rather than flour, and press cracked edges back together as you go.
- Yield and keepingThe original sets the size of the cake by the diameter of the girdle, and has you cut the dough into three or four sections for ease of handling. Cool completely, then store in a tin somewhere dry and, as the writer says, rather warm; damp is what turns them limp. They will refresh in a low oven for a few minutes.
Oatcakes are the bread of a country where oats grew and wheat largely did not, and the technique described here — a girdle over the fire for setting, radiant heat for drying — belongs to the open hearth rather than the oven. The insistence on nothing but meal, cold water and salt reflects a genuine Victorian argument: as commercial baking soda and cheap fats spread through domestic cookery in the second half of the nineteenth century, they crept into oatcakes too, and purists objected on grounds of both flavour and digestion. The recipe is credited only to "one writer", and its title — "another way" — implies at least one other method alongside it. The complaint about heartburn belongs to the period's own way of talking about digestion, though fatty food is genuinely associated with reflux; and the observation underneath it is sound: fat and soda shorten the cake and cost it the dry, snapping crispness that distinguishes a good oatcake from a biscuit.