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Scottish Fancies
1 egg. 1/2 cup sugar. 1 cup rolled oats ⅓ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon vanilla ⅔ tablespoon melted butter Beat egg until light, add gradually sugar, and then stir in remaining ingredients. Drop mixture by teaspoonfuls on a thoroughly greased inverted dripping-pan one inch apart. Spread into circular shape with a case knife first dipped in cold water. Bake in a moderate oven until delicately browned. To give variety use two-thirds cup rolled oats and fill cup with shredded cocoanut.
A thin, lacy oat wafer that spreads as it bakes and crisps as it cools. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete — the egg and the sugar called for in the method have no quantities attached, so the proportions have to be sourced from another edition before baking.
- Missing quantitiesThe method begins "Beat egg until light, add gradually sugar," but neither appears in the list with an amount. Comparable oat wafers of the period run to one egg and roughly half a cup of sugar per cup of oats; treat that as a reconstruction, not the book's figure.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. These are thin enough to colour quickly at the edges while the centres are still pale, so check them early; ten to twelve minutes is a reasonable expectation.
- Inverted dripping-panA dripping-pan is a shallow roasting pan; turning it over gave a flat, rimless surface so a spatula could slide under. A modern rimless cookie sheet or a heavy baking sheet does the same. Butter it well or line with parchment — the sugar makes these grip.
- Case knifeAn ordinary table knife, as distinct from a carving or pocket knife. Dipping it in cold water keeps the sticky batter from dragging as you spread each mound into a thin disc.
- SpacingOne inch apart is tight for a mixture that spreads as it bakes; allow more room between the discs, and expect them to run together at the edges if crowded.
- Rolled oatsOld-fashioned rolled oats, not instant or steel-cut. Quick oats will work but give a finer, less lacy texture.
- Lifting and coolingLet them set on the pan about a minute, then lift while still pliable. Once fully cold they are brittle and will shatter; if they harden on the sheet, return the pan to the oven for a few seconds to soften them.
- Coconut variation"Cocoanut" is simply the older spelling. Use unsweetened shredded coconut — modern sweetened flake will push these well past the sugar level the recipe intends.
- YieldOn the reconstructed proportions, roughly two to three dozen small wafers, depending on how thin they are spread.
Despite the name, these have less to do with Scotland than with oats: by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks routinely attached "Scotch" or "Scottish" to anything built on oatmeal, the grain being firmly associated with Scottish domestic cooking. Rolled oats themselves were a relatively new convenience in that period — steam-flattened oat groats came into wide commercial production in the United States in the 1870s and 1880s and were marketed hard as a breakfast food, after which cookbook writers began finding other uses for the box. The wafer belongs to a familiar class of thin drop cakes spread with a knife rather than rolled and cut, a technique that suited the flat-bottomed dripping-pans then found in every kitchen.