Home › Filling the Cooky Jar › Trilbys
Trilbys
4 cups rolled oats 2 cups Five Roses flour 1 cup (large) brown sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon soda 1 cup butter or lard Buttermilk to moisten.
Roll thin. Cut into small squares.
Bake in quick oven. When cooked, put together with date dressing.
A rolled oatmeal dough sandwiched with date paste, written in the compressed style of a 1913 promotional cookbook that assumed the cook knew the rest. Two things are left unsaid: how much buttermilk, and what "date dressing" is.
- Buttermilk to moistenAdd it a tablespoon at a time, starting with about 1/4 cup, and stop as soon as the crumbs gather into a dough that holds together when pressed. A wet dough will not roll thin and the oats will make it sticky rather than short.
- Quick ovenThe book gives no temperature; "quick oven" is conventionally read as about 400-425F. At that heat thin oat squares are done in well under fifteen minutes; pull them when the edges are set and browning, since the brown sugar will carry them from golden to burnt quickly.
- Date dressingThe recipe assumes a filling the cook already knows. A standard version is roughly 1 lb pitted dates chopped, with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water, simmered and stirred to a thick spreadable paste, then cooled. Spread it on cooled squares only, or the filling will soften the biscuit.
- Rolled oatsUse old-fashioned rolled oats, not quick or instant. The 1913 product was a thick flake that keeps its texture through rolling and baking; instant oats dissolve into the dough and give a pasty crumb.
- Butter or lardOne cup is 8 oz, two sticks. The recipe leaves the choice open: lard gives a shorter, more tender square; butter gives more flavour and slightly more spread.
- Soda without acidThe teaspoon of soda is activated by the acid in the buttermilk, so buttermilk is not really optional. Substitute sweet milk and the unreacted soda may leave a soapy taste.
- Rolling thinAim for about 1/8 inch. Oat dough tears, so roll between sheets of parchment and chill the dough for 20 minutes first if the kitchen is warm.
- YieldA large batch; the count depends entirely on how thin you roll, and each pair of squares makes one filled sandwich. They keep well in a tin for several days and soften pleasantly as the filling migrates.
Trilbys were a fixture of Canadian and northern American cooky jars in the early twentieth century, and the name is generally traced to George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby, a runaway bestseller said to have lent its heroine's name to all manner of goods, hats and biscuits among them, in the years after publication. The date filling reflects what was in the pantry: pressed dates shipped from North Africa and the Middle East were cheap, kept well without refrigeration, and turned into a sweet paste with nothing but sugar and water. The Five Roses Cook Book itself was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to purchasers of its flour, which is why the ingredient list names the brand outright; recipes were solicited from Canadian housewives.