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Dessert

Scotch Oatmeal Cakes

A simple oatcake made with oatmeal, salt, suet, and water, baked over a fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Scotch Oatmeal Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix oatmeal, salt, and melted suet.

  2. Add enough water to form a thick dough.

  3. Roll out the dough as thin as possible and divide into quarters.

Cook and finish

  1. Place on a flat iron griddle over the fire and bake each side until golden.

  2. Toast the cakes before the fire until they are curled and crisp.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Fine oatmeal
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their grainy, sturdy structure.
Melted suet
Adds fat that makes the dough rich and gives the cakes a crisp, tender texture.
Water
Binds the oatmeal and suet into a cohesive dough that can be rolled thin.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough as thin as possible. Oatmeal dough has no gluten, so it cannot stretch or hold much structure. Rolling it thin lets the cakes dry out and crisp fully during baking instead of staying soft or cracking unevenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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