[Sca-cooks] Oatcakes-- was Midrealm Coronation Lunch

[johnna holloway]

david friedman wrote:
 >> Oatcakes and  Barley Cakes, Assorted Breads and Manchets,
 >  >> Johnnae llyn Lewis
 > >
 > Do you have a period recipe for oatcakes? I have a conjectural one,
 > based on Froissart's brief mention of their use by scottish troopers,
 > and would be interested to compare.
--------------------------

I actually turned up more descriptions than just the Froissart mention.

Alexander Fenton, among others, has documented the long association of 
the Scottish hearth with these characteristic flatbreads of oats and 
barley. See Fenton, Alexander. “Hearth and kitchen: the Scottish 
Example.” Food and Material Culture. [Proceedings of the Fourth 
Symposium of the International Commission for Research into European 
Food History.] East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 1998. pp. 29-47.

Brown, Catherine. Scottish Cookery. 1985. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1999.
includes descriptions by C. Lowther dated 1629 from his diary "Our 
Journal Into Scotland"  'Three Travellers in the Borders had oat bread 
cakes, baked a fifth of an inch thick on a griddle...'. p. 6.
Brown also mentions an account by G. Buchanan titled Description of 
Scotland which also mentions them. This was also dated 1629.

Neither Lowther or Buchanan turn up in the ESTC so I suspect they are 
journals and were never published. Moryson, Fynes. An Itinerary Written 
by Fynes Moryson Gent. from 1617 is available and they are mentioned in 
there.

A quick read on the subject is Lockhart’s The Scots and Their Oats. 
Although he’s talking about Yorkshire and not Scotland, Brears’ The 
Gentlewoman’s Kitchen also includes a good account of regional hearth 
breads. Brears includes a 1683 recipe for "To make thick Oat-cakes" that 
contains no oats. It makes a thick cake that is similar he says to the 
cakes that can still be purchased in Yorkshire bakeries today.


There are a number of recipes-- all late. [The first Scottish cookbook 
wasn't published until 1736.] The combination of just meal and water 
made into a paste and baked with perhaps a bit of dripping wouldn't need 
a recipe, persay. It's interesting to note that eventually there are 
thick cakes mentioned along with a number of thin ones that are made in 
a variety of ways. This is still to be found and Catherine Brown goes 
into a number of these descriptions in her works.

Here are these recipes--

CXL. To Make Oak-Cakes.

Take fine Flower, and mix it very well with new Ale yeast, and make it 
very stiff, then make it into little Cakes, and roul them very thin, 
then lay them on an Iron to bake, or on a baking stone, and make but a 
slow fire under it, and as they are baking, take them and turn the edges 
of them round on the iron, that they may bake also, one quarter of an 
hour will bake them; a little before you take them up, turn them on the 
other side, only to flat them; for if turn them too soon, it will hinder 
the rising, the Iron or Stone whereon they are baked, must stand at 
distance from the fire. pp. 260-261.
The queen-like closet; or, Rich cabinet stored with all manner of rare 
receipts for preserving, candying & cookery. Very pleasant and 
beneficial to all ingenious persons of the female sex. By Hannah Wolley.
Publication date: 1670. The running title at the top of the page is:
The Ladies Cabinet, so I suspect that this recipe is found in her 
earlier work as well. It's not on EEBO yet so I can't check it.

John Nott in his Cooks Dictionary of 1726 includes another recipe that 
calls for the ale yeast, but it's not a copy of Wolley's.

There are also recipes or mentions in Thomas Tryon's  The good 
house-wife made a doctor,of 1692.
where in CHAP. VI. he writes:
• ...  or less Egress and Regress; but the better way is to make it into 
thin Cakes, like Oat-Cakes, and bake them on a Stone, which many in the 
North of England  ..."

Markham mentioned them earlier in his chapter VI of The English 
Housewife. "Of the excellency of Oates, and the many singular vertes and 
vses of them in a family."

By 1688 Randle Holme in his The Academy of Armory, or, A Storehouse of 
Armory and Blazon describes them as: Oaten Cakes, are made of Oat meal, 
and Leavened very well, and knodden flat and round, and Baked on a Back 
Stone, of which there are 2 sorts, hard and soft." Found Page 294 of the 
Book 3, Chapter 6.

Moffet's Healths Improvement also has something to say about them, but I 
won't copy that here as I shall have to look the text up again. He was 
first published in 1655, but is believed to have written his manuscript 
in the 1590's. [Beck thought 1594.] He died in 1604/1605.

Hope this helps.

Johnnae llyn Lewis






david friedman wrote:

>> Oatcakes and  Barley Cakes, Assorted Breads and Manchets,
>  >> Johnnae llyn Lewis
> 
> 
> Do you have a period recipe for oatcakes? I have a conjectural one, 
> based on Froissart's brief mention of their use by scottish troopers, 
> and would be interested to compare.