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Oatmeal Cakes (Mrs I R Fitchett)
— Mrs. I. R. Fitchett
One cup of brown sugar, one-half cup of lard, one egg, one scant cup of flour, one scant cup of uncooked oat meal, one-half cup of raisins, one-half cup of nuts cut fine, one-half teaspoon of soda sifted with the flour, one-half teaspoon of cinnamon.
— Mrs. Charles G. Coffin
A drop cookie given as a bare ingredient list, in the way village cookbooks assumed everyone already knew the method. Nothing here needs substitution, but the missing instructions do need filling in.
- No method at allCream the lard and brown sugar, beat in the egg, then stir in the flour sifted with soda and cinnamon, followed by the oats, raisins and nuts. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto a greased sheet, two inches apart.
- Oven and timeThe book gives none. Bake at 375F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and browned but the centres still look soft; they firm as they cool.
- "Uncooked oat meal"In a community cookbook of this period this most likely means rolled oats rather than cooked porridge. Old-fashioned rolled oats give the right chew; steel-cut oats will not soften in a ten-minute bake and will be gritty.
- A scant cupA cup filled just short of level, so roughly seven-eighths. The recipe applies it to both the flour and the oats.
- LardHalf a cup of lard was the ordinary household shortening and gives a tender, faintly savoury cookie. Butter works and browns more; modern shortening is the closest neutral match in texture.
- Soda with no sour milkThere is no sour milk or molasses here for the half teaspoon of soda to react with; the molasses left in brown sugar supplies some acidity, and brown sugar of the period was generally less refined than today's light brown. Dark brown sugar is the closer match in flavour.
- SaltNone is listed. Add a quarter teaspoon with the flour if you like.
- YieldAbout two dozen small cookies. The dough is stiff and holds its shape, so they stay thick rather than spreading thin.
- The two namesA name appears both above and below the ingredient list. In books of this kind the credit normally follows the recipe, so the upper name may belong to the entry before it; the text between the two names is a single recipe.
Church and village fundraising cookbooks like this one are often said to have been compiled from handwritten cards, which may be why so many entries are ingredient lists with no oven, no time and no pan size. Oats moved from the porridge pot into baking in American kitchens through the late nineteenth century, as rolled oats became cheap and widely available in bulk, and the oatmeal drop cookie with raisins and nuts is the standard result of that shift. The recipe calls for lard rather than butter, and pairs brown sugar with soda.