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Oatmeal Cakes
Boil in three-quarters of a pint of milk three ounces oatmeal with saltspoon salt for twenty minutes; let cool off. Then add three ounces sifted flour, two ounces sugar and half teaspoon baking powder. Knead with the hand for five minutes; then roll out on a lightly floured table, to the thickness of three-quarters of an inch. Then cut into six equal round pieces. Place on a lightly buttered pastry pan, lightly wet the surface with a little milk. Set in a moderate oven to bake for fifteen minutes. Remove, split open without separating, lightly butter the interior of each and serve hot.
A porridge-based scone rather than a crisp Scottish oatcake. The batter is cooked first, cooled, then enriched into a soft dough, so the texture depends entirely on which oats you use.
- The hinge: use coarse oatmeal, not rolled oatsTwenty minutes of boiling suits steel-cut or pinhead oatmeal, which keeps some grain and body. Rolled or quick oats collapse into paste in that time and the dough will be too slack to roll.
- MeasurementsThree-quarters of a pint of milk is 1 1/2 cups. Three ounces of oatmeal is about 1/2 cup dry steel-cut; 3 oz flour is roughly 2/3 cup and 2 oz sugar about 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon.
- Cool it properly"Let cool off" probably means well down towards room temperature rather than merely warm. A still-warm porridge base can start the baking powder working early and give a gummy dough that sticks to everything.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350-375F. Cakes 3/4 inch thick may want a few minutes beyond the stated fifteen; they are done when the tops are set and lightly coloured and a skewer comes out clean.
- KneadingFive minutes of hand kneading here is largely for cohesion rather than gluten development. Work on a lightly floured surface, as the recipe directs, and add flour only sparingly, or the cakes turn dense.
- Milk washBrushing with milk gives colour and a soft crust. The recipe says to wet the surface only lightly; do not soak it.
- Yield and servingSix cakes, one per person as a tea or breakfast bread. Split while hot, butter the cut faces, and close them again as directed; like most soft scones they are best eaten the day they are made.
Oatmeal cooked to porridge and then baked into soft rounds sits between two Scottish and northern English habits: the thin, dry girdle oatcake, and the practice of using up leftover breakfast porridge in a griddle bread or scone. The sugar and baking powder suggest a modern hotel version rather than a farmhouse one; chemical raising agents were in wide commercial use by the turn of the twentieth century. Its placement in the "World's Kitchen" section reflects the ambition of grand-hotel cookbooks of the period, which gathered regional breads and dishes from across Europe and presented them in standardised, portioned form for an American kitchen brigade. Oats carried a lingering reputation as coarse fare, which may be why this recipe softens and sweetens them into something fit for a tea table.