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Oatmeal Drop Cookies (C sour milk C flour C oatmeal)
1 C sour milk ½ C flour ½ C oatmeal 1/2 C nutmeats or raisins Drop on greased tins. Makes 3 dozen.
Mrs. R. F. Wright.
This is a church-supper contribution recorded in shorthand, and the list as printed is incomplete — there is no fat, sugar, egg or leavening, and no oven temperature. Treat it as a ratio to be filled in rather than a set of instructions.
- What is missingNo fat, sugar, egg or leavening is printed here. A drop cookie built on 1½ cups flour and 1½ cups oatmeal would typically need something in the range of ½ cup shortening or butter, ¾ to 1 cup sugar, an egg and a teaspoon of soda, though the amounts are guesswork. Note in particular that without soda the sour milk has no alkali to react with.
- Sour milkThis means naturally clabbered raw milk, mildly acidic and thickened. The standing substitute is a cup of whole milk with a tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice stirred in and left ten minutes, or a cup of buttermilk. Do not use modern pasteurised milk that has gone off — it spoils rather than sours.
- OatmealMost probably rolled oats, the old-fashioned thick-cut kind, not steel-cut and not instant. Steel-cut will not soften in a short bake and gives a gritty cookie.
- NutmeatsSimply shelled nuts, chopped. Walnuts, hickory nuts or black walnuts would be likely candidates. The recipe offers raisins as an alternative without saying why.
- OvenNo temperature is given. As a modern working guide, bake at 350–375°F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges set and colour but the centres are still soft.
- Greased tinsThe "tins" are flat baking sheets. Grease lightly or use parchment; oatmeal doughs tend to stick as they cool, so lift them off while still warm.
- YieldThe recipe says three dozen. Space the drops about two inches apart on the sheet.
Sour milk baking was a thrift technique of the era before household refrigeration, when milk clabbered naturally within a day or two and was too valuable to discard; paired with soda it produced the lift that gave quick breads, griddle cakes and cookies their rise. Oats in a sweet cookie appear to have been a relatively recent habit in American home baking, spreading with the commercial rolled-oat mills of the later nineteenth century, and by the time books of this kind were being assembled the oatmeal drop cookie was a common item in the church-supper and lunch-pail repertoire. Community cookbooks of this type were often set in type largely as contributors submitted them, which may explain why Mrs. Wright's entry reads as a memory aid rather than a full recipe.