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Heather Biscuits
2 cups brown sugar 3 eggs Pinch of salt 1½ cups shortening ¾ cup water 3 teaspoons baking powder 3 cups oatmeal 1 cup Five Roses flour (or enough to make as thick as cookie dough).
This is an ingredient list in the style of its period: the method was assumed, not written. Anyone reading it in 1915 would have known to cream, mix and drop the dough onto a tin, so here is what the blanks contain.
- "Biscuits" means cookiesIn Canadian and British usage of the period "biscuit" often meant a sweet cookie, and the ingredients here (brown sugar, eggs, oats) point that way rather than to a raised quick bread. Expect a chewy oatmeal drop cookie, not something to split and butter.
- Assumed methodCream the shortening with the brown sugar, beat in the eggs, add the water, then stir in the oats, baking powder, salt and finally the flour. Add flour only until the dough holds a mound on the spoon.
- OatmealIn a cookie of this kind this most likely means rolled oats, the ordinary flaked kind. Quick oats give a sandier, flatter cookie; steel-cut oats will not soften in the time given.
- ShorteningAt the time this could be lard, a lard-and-butter mixture, or one of the newer vegetable shortenings. Butter gives good flavour and a little more spread. A cup and a half is a generous proportion by modern standards and the cookies will be rich and short.
- The flour is deliberately openOne cup is the starting point, not the answer, and the original says so. Brown sugar moisture and egg size both vary; work up in a couple of tablespoons at a time until the dough is stiff enough to drop without running.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons for a single cup of flour is a great deal by current practice, but the leavening here also has three cups of oats to lift. Use a modern double-acting powder as written and bake fairly soon after mixing.
- Oven and timeThe book gives none. A moderate oven, 350–375F, for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and the centres still look soft. Brown sugar and oats both darken quickly, so judge by edge colour rather than the clock.
- YieldThe book gives none, and it depends entirely on the size of the mounds; a batch built on three cups of oats and two cups of sugar makes a great many cookies. They keep well in a tin for several days and firm up as they cool.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its Five Roses flour, and it collected recipes contributed by housewives across Canada — which explains the telegraphic style here, an ingredient list handed over as one cook would hand it to another who already knew what to do with it. The name is often said to point to Scotland, heather being a familiar shorthand for Scottishness in Canadian naming, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. There is no evidence of heather in the dish itself. What the recipe really records is how cheap and central rolled oats were in a Canadian pantry: three cups of oats to one of flour, in a book whose whole purpose was to sell flour.