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Oatmeal Cookies
3 cups oatmeal 1½ cups cream 2 eggs 2 cups sugar 1 cup lard 1 teaspoon soda Pinch of salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon Essence of peppermint Five Roses flour.
Soak the oatmeal ½ an hour in the cream. Add the eggs, sugar, lard, soda, salt and cinnamon. Flavour with essence of peppermint to taste. Roll out thin with Five Roses flour. Spread in tins and bake in moderate oven. Cut into squares while warm. Let stand in tin until cool, then lift out.
A contributed recipe of the sort that assumes the cook already knows what the dough should feel like. Two things need settling before you start: how much flour, and how much peppermint.
- The flour is up to youFive Roses flour appears in the ingredient list with no quantity, which was normal in a promotional cookbook built from readers' recipes. Expect to work in 3 to 4 cups of all-purpose flour, adding it until the mass holds together and just stops sticking to the hands.
- Roll out, or spread in tinsThe instructions give both, and they are not compatible. Given the volume of cream and the direction to cut squares while warm, treat this as a thick soft dough pressed evenly into shallow greased pans, roughly 1/4 to 1/3 inch deep, rather than a rolled and cut cooky.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350 to 375F. Shallow pans of this depth should be done in about 20 to 25 minutes, when the surface is set and the edges have coloured.
- Peppermint "to taste"Essence of peppermint is a strong alcoholic solution of peppermint oil and is ferociously potent. Start with 1/4 teaspoon for the whole batch; a full teaspoon will make the pan taste medicinal.
- Oatmeal means rolled oatsOatmeal -- most probably rolled oats, and old-fashioned rolled oats are the safe choice here, though in period Canadian usage "oatmeal" could also mean ground or pinhead oatmeal. Not instant. The half-hour soak in cream is what softens the grain; steel-cut oats will stay gritty through baking.
- Cream and sodaOne teaspoon of soda needs an acid to work against. Period cream was often slightly soured, which supplied it. With modern sweet cream the lift will be slight, so either use buttermilk in place of some of the cream or accept a dense, chewy bar.
- LardOne cup is about 200 g. Lard gives the tenderest result and is still sold; an equal weight of vegetable shortening behaves much the same, and butter will make a firmer, more flavourful bar.
- YieldA generous batch, close to 4 lb of dough. Figure two 9x13 pans and forty to fifty squares. Cut them warm as directed, since they firm up considerably as they cool and will crack if you wait.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal, and grew out of recipes submitted by Canadian women who baked with the company's flour; that origin explains both the brand name dropped into the middle of the ingredient list and the loose, conversational instructions. Oat baking of this kind was everyday work in Scottish- and Ulster-settled parts of Canada, where oats were cheap and local. The peppermint is the surprise to a modern reader, but flavouring essences were staples of the early-twentieth-century pantry and were used freely in plain cookies and cakes, peppermint among the lesser ones beside vanilla and lemon; peppermint in particular was often said to be kept as much for its supposed digestive virtue as for baking. Pressing dough into a tin and cutting squares while warm was the fast method, quicker than turning out uniform rounds.