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Oatmeal Biscuits
Mix with one pound of oatmeal half a pound of flour and one tablespoonful of baking-powder, rub in half a pound of butter, and, when it is smooth, stir in enough warm water to knead the whole into a paste, turn onto a table, and roll it out very thin. Cut the paste into rounds, lay them on a baking-sheet, and bake in the oven. When they are cooked, leave the biscuits until they are cold, then pack them in biscuit-tins, and keep them in a dry cupboard. They are served at luncheon very often.
A plain British-style oat biscuit, closer to a cracker than a cookie, meant to be baked in quantity and kept in a tin. The recipe gives no oven temperature and no time, so both need supplying.
- Oatmeal, not rolled oats"Oatmeal" here almost certainly means ground oats — pinhead or, better, medium to fine oatmeal. Modern rolled oats have a flat flake that will not compact into a thin sheet; if that is all you have, pulse them in a food processor until sandy before mixing.
- Weights to volumesOne pound of medium oatmeal is roughly 3 cups, half a pound of flour about 1 3/4 cups, and half a pound of butter is two sticks. The tablespoon of baking powder is modest for that quantity of dry ingredients, but workable.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F for a crisp biscuit, 12 to 18 minutes depending on thickness, until the edges are set and lightly coloured. Higher heat browns the surface before the inside dries out, and these need to dry to keep.
- Roll thinner than feels rightThis is the hinge. A high-fat oat paste rolled thick bakes soft and stales quickly; rolled to about 1/8 inch it bakes through and keeps its crispness much longer. Flour or oatmeal the board generously, as the dough is short and tears.
- Warm waterWarm rather than cold water is probably meant to soften the oatmeal and keep the butter pliable so the paste holds together. Add it a spoonful at a time and stop as soon as the mass coheres — a wet dough spreads and toughens.
- SaltThe recipe calls for no salt, and butter of the period was commonly sold salted. With unsalted butter add about a teaspoon of salt to the dry mix, or the biscuits taste flat.
- YieldThe full quantity makes something like six to ten dozen small rounds, depending on the cutter — a hotel batch. Halving or quartering it is sensible for a domestic kitchen.
- Cooling and storageThe instruction to leave them until cold before tinning matters. Warm biscuits release steam inside a closed tin and soften each other; cooled fully on a rack, they hold their snap in an airtight container.
Oat biscuits of this kind descend from the Scottish and northern English oatcake, a girdle-baked bread of ground oats and water that predates wheat's dominance in British baking; the addition of butter, wheat flour and chemical leavening turns it into the tea-table biscuit that commercial bakers such as those in Edinburgh and Reading were selling in tins by the late nineteenth century. Oscar's version closes with the line "they are served at luncheon very often," which tells you their function: a neutral, keepable biscuit to go out with cheese, soup or a savoury course. That a grand New York hotel baked its own crackers in bulk and stored them in tins is itself a reminder of how much of such a kitchen's work was provisioning rather than cooking to order.