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Dessert

Scotch Bannocks

A Scottish oatcake made from oatmeal, flour, lard, sugar, and baking soda, baked twice and rolled with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Scotch Bannocks

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour and oatmeal together.

  2. Rub in the lard.

  3. Add the sugar and baking soda.

  4. Mix to a stiff dough with cold water.

  5. Divide into twelve even parts.

  6. Roll each part very thin.

  7. Bake for 10 minutes in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) on a baking sheet lined with clean kitchen paper.

Make the sponge

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the yolks until frothy.

  3. Add half of the sugar and beat again.

  4. Beat the egg whites to a firm white froth.

  5. Add the remaining sugar and whisk thoroughly.

  6. Combine the yolks and whites.

  7. Carefully fold in the flour without whisking.

  8. Spread the mixture evenly on the papered baking sheet.

  9. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes in a very hot oven at 425°F (220°C).

Finish and serve

  1. Turn the cake upside down on a table.

  2. Brush the paper with a wet brush to remove it easily.

  3. Spread the cake with jam.

  4. Roll it up.

  5. Serve.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the dough, giving the oatcakes their hearty, crumbly texture.
Flour
Adds structure that holds the dough and sponge together during baking.
Lard
Fat that coats the flour and keeps the oatcakes short and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the dough and encourage browning during baking.

The step that matters

Carefully fold in the flour without whisking. Egg foam holds air that gives the sponge its lift. Whisking or heavy stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense, flat cake that rolls poorly.

“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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