Scotch Oat Cake
INGREDIENTS for 4 cakes.-2 lbs. of meal, 2 oz. of butter, 1 teaspoonful of carbonate of soda. AVERAGE COST, 5d.
Put a quarter of the meal into a basin, and a quarter of the butter and soda into a tea-cup, filling this half full with hot water. When the butter and soda are melted, mix quickly with the meal in the basin with a knife, and, after stirring well, turn the mixture out on to a paste-board, and mould it flat and round with the knuckles, spreading it gradually so that it does not crack at the edges. Strew over the cake plenty of dry meal and roll it out thin, then cut from the centre into 3 cakes, and put them on a hot griddle, moving them as they get done from a cool spot to a hotter. By pressing the nail on the surface, it may be known when they are done. Next move them from the fire to SCRAP CAKES. the toaster in front of it, and let them dry gradually. Mix the other 3 cakes in the same way, having one ready as another comes off the fire.
TIME.-10 minutes to bake.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A traditional Scottish girdle oatcake, worked in four small batches because the dough stiffens and cracks as it cools. The stray words SEA-KALE and SCRAP CAKES are running heads from the neighbouring pages, not ingredients.
- Work in quarters, and quicklyThis is the hinge. Oatmeal dough mixed with hot water is workable only while warm; it goes crumbly and splits at the edges as it cools. Mix a quarter of the meal at a time, as directed, and get it rolled and on the girdle before starting the next.
- "Meal" means oatmealMedium or fine oatmeal, not rolled oats and not flour. Rolled oats will not hold together in the same way; if that is all you have, pulse them until they are gritty rather than powdery.
- Carbonate of sodaIn Victorian cookery books this generally means bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). A teaspoonful across 2 lb of meal is a very small amount, and with no acid in the mixture it will do little more than soften the paste.
- Griddle heatThe book gives no temperature; a heavy pan or bakestone, ungreased, at moderate heat. The instruction to move cakes from a cool spot to a hotter one reflects an open fire; on a modern hob, cook gently at first and raise the heat a little to finish.
- The nail testPressing a fingernail into the surface tells you the crumb has set: a firm cake takes the mark without the dough giving way underneath. The book allows 10 minutes to bake.
- Drying instead of toastingThe "toaster in front of the fire" is a drying stage, not browning. A 275-300F/140-150C oven for 15-25 minutes does the same job and is what makes the cakes keep crisp.
- YieldFour rounds each cut into three, so twelve wedges. They store well in a tin once fully dried and are for cheese, butter or herring rather than the tea table.
- Average cost5d. is pre-decimal pence, a Victorian price note of no use now except as a reminder of how cheap oatmeal was.
Oatcakes are among the oldest forms of Scottish baking, made where oats grew reliably and wheat did not, and cooked on a girdle (griddle) or bakestone rather than in an oven. The method here - hot water, a scrap of fat, meal worked to a stiff paste, rolled with a dusting of dry meal and finished by drying before the fire - is close to the technique long described in Scottish cookery, and rounds cut into wedges give the pieces called quarters or farls. Its appearance in an English general cookery book sits with the nineteenth-century practice of gathering regional British dishes into one reference, with an average cost given for each.