”Oatcakes are a delicate relish when eaten warm with ale,” Robert Burns wrote in the late 18th Century. His fellow countrymen may have agreed with that sentiment, but they also ate theirs with eggs, cheese and cod. Most Scots, in fact, considered oatcakes to be their daily bread and by 1929, when F. Marion McNeill penned ”The Scots Kitchen,” she wrote, ”Oatcakes are especially good with herrings, sardines, cheese, curds, buttermilk, broth, and kail (kale); or spread with butter and marmalade to complete the breakfast.” In the Highland and Island areas of Scotland, oatcakes are considered a nourishing part of breakfast (spread with bitter, thick-cut marmalade or topped with a poached egg) and an enjoyable accompaniment to a bowl of thick vegetable soup or a supper tray of assorted cheeses. Elsewhere, these small, flat biscuits may show up only at traditional gatherings such as Hogmanay (the Scottish celebration of New Year`s Eve) and at a Robert Burns Supper on Jan. 25, celebrating the poet`s birthday.
According to Scottish cookbooks, it would seem that most Scots have a preference for dry and brittle-textured oatcakes. However, depending on the region and the cook, they can be thick and crumbly or thin and crispy. They may be made from a mixture of oatmeal, wheat flour, butter and water or the more traditional oatmeal, bacon fat (or lard) and water. Highland oatcakes, for example, are generally made from fine oatmeal, fat and boiling water. The dough is rolled out to a thickness of one-eighth of an inch and cut into circles of two, three or nine inches that are then cut into farls (quarters).
Even though most cooks now bake their oatcakes in the oven, farls were traditionally baked on a girdle (taken from the old French gredil and resembling a modern griddle) until they crisped and the corners began to curl. In the Lowlands the cook may add a half measure of wheat flour to the medium- cut oatmeal, use butter or fat and moisten the mixture with cold water. This dough is rolled to a thickness of about a quarter inch and cut into small circles.
Commercially available
For those cooks who don`t wish to make their own, several commercial varieties are available throughout Britain at supermarkets and corner grocery shops. And again, depending on whether the bakery is in the Highlands or the Lowlands, the oatcakes will be thin and dry or thick and crunchy. Travelers in Scotland may find homemade oatcakes at a bed and breakfast place or a small, family-operated inn.
Visitors can count on sampling traditional Highland oatcakes at The Creggans, a charmingly renovated West Highlands inn on the shores of Loch Fyne, at Strachur in Argyll. It is owned and run by Sir Fitzroy and Lady Maclean and their son Charles. The author of many cookbooks, Lady Maclean supervises the kitchens and the menus. Guests are offered a mix of her own country recipes, French cuisine and traditional Scottish fare. This includes smoked Loch Fyne salmon, trout rolled in oatmeal and pan-fried, eggs and smoked haddock, haggis with a dram of whiskey, cullen skink (creamy potato soup) and roast leg of spring hill lamb.
The oatcakes, made fresh daily by Neill Mugg, appear in the breadbasket at lunch and dinner. Served with a small round of Islay cheddar cheese (the word is pronounced EYE-la), slices of chicken liver pate and a dram of Old MacPhunn (the Macleans` own 10-year-old vatted malt whiskey), the oatcakes are crisp, nutty and flavorful. The recipe is recorded in ”Lady Maclean`s Cook Book,” a collection of handwritten recipes contributed by peers of the realm as well as Scottish cooks.
”They`re made from a traditional Highland recipe given to me by my nanny`s mother,” said Lady Maclean. ”She was a gamekeeper`s wife and did her baking on the girdle.” Although the oatcakes are baked in one of the restaurant`s commercial ovens, Mugg sticks to the original recipe of medium-cut oatmeal, salt, bacon drippings and enough boiling water to make a stiff dough. Working swiftly to roll the dough to a thickness of a quarter-inch before it dries out, he makes the job of cutting 80 two-inch circles look very easy. Oatmeal dough dries out quickly, making it difficult for the novice to cut the cake circles. Adding wheat flour to the mixture makes for a more pliable dough, which is probably why some cooks follow this practice.
Before the advent of ovens and bread baking, kaaks (as the hard, thin oatcakes were once called) were baked on a flat baking stone by the side of the fire. In the 16th Century they were baked on a gridiron or girdle, a round iron plate fitted with a semicircular handle that was first made in Culross, Fife.
Bannock baking
The girdle was also used for baking bannocks, thick cakes made from barley, wheat, rye, oats or a mixture of flours. In some parts of the country the term bannock is synonymous with oatcake. This thicker version was sometimes baked on a brander, a heavy wire rack suspended over a fire. This is the method 70-year-old Alistair Ferguson of Coultoon, on the Hebridean Isle of Islay, remembers his mother using when she made a branderbannock, an oatcake that is 1 1/2 inches thick, from oatmeal, wheatmeal flour, fat and water. Her oatcakes-about an eighth of an inch thick-were rolled into large diamond shapes and cooked on the girdle. While the cakes were still hot, she transferred them with a long-handled, heart-shaped iron spatula to the banna- rack, a toaster rack used in the final drying stage of the oatcakes. The edges of these oatcakes would curl until they almost touched.
Today Ferguson enjoys the oven-baked oatcakes of his housekeeper Ruth Maclean, who uses a similar recipe but, like most modern cooks, bakes her small rounds in the oven.
She also likes to use a mixture of lard and Islay butter, which because it is made from the whey left over from the Islay cheesemaking, has a strong, rich flavor.
If few cooks use the girdle for oatcakes (it`s reserved mainly for drop pancakes these days) some do use traditional implements associated with oatcake making. The spurtle, resembling the handle of a wooden spoon, may be used to stir the ingredients (it is still the best implement for stirring oatmeal into boiling water when making porridge) and a grooved rolling pin called a bannock stick for imprinting a criss-cross pattern onto the oatcake dough.
Cooked or uncooked, oatcakes were once a dietary staple of shepherds, soldiers and sailors. McNeill wrote that in the Hebrides, the original oatcake made with oatmeal and cold water was called a potag or ollag and that Skye fishermen used to moisten a handful of oatmeal with sea water and form it into a bannock.
The oatcake recipe was first recorded by Jean Froissart, a French poet, traveler and chronicler of the 14th Century. Noting that the Scottish soldier carried a flat metal plate on his saddle and a wallet of oatmeal on his back, he wrote ”he casteth this plate into the fire, he moisteneth a little of his meal in water, and when the plate is heated, he layeth his paste thereon and maketh a little cake, which he eateth to comfort his stomach. Hence it is no marvel that the Scots should be able to make longer marches than other men.” From medieval times into the late 19th Century, many forms of oatcakes or bannocks evolved in celebration of special festivals and to ward off evil. In some areas, oatmeal was sprinkled over the bannocks before baking so that the fairies wouldn`t take them. Or a hole poked through the center with a finger was a way to keep the trolls away.
The bonnach Bride (St. Bride`s bannock) was baked to celebrate the first day of spring and bonnach Bealtainn (Beltane bannock) for the first day of summer. At the autumn equinox, it was time for the bonnach Luanastain (Lammas bannock). As the first day of winter arrived, those celebrating the solstice partook of the bonnach Samhthaain (Hallowmas bannock).
An extremely salty (bannoch Salainn) oatcake was eaten in the Highlands at Halloween to induce dreams that would foretell the future. On Christmas morning, oatcakes called Yule bannocks were baked before daybreak and given to all members of the household.
Baked to acknowledge the birth of Jesus, Yule bannocks originated as a pagan method of predicting the future. Those whose oatcakes remained intact until nightfall could expect good fortune, whereas those who broke their oatcakes were subject to shattered dreams.
Buying oatcakes
Some commercial varieties of oatcakes can be nutty and crunchy, others dry and flavorless. Walker`s of Strathspey Bakery, at Aberlour in the northern Highlands of Scotland, makes several varieties, but their Highland Outcake, which is of medium thickness, rough-textured, dry and nutty, may be the tastiest. Walker`s is available in the United States at many specialty food shops.
The more flavorful oatcakes, however, are available only in Scotland. Those considered particularly delicious include the medium-thick, crunchy and nutty Nairn`s Capital Oatcakes; the medium-thick, dry and nutty Laird`s Larder Highland Oatcakes; the thick, slightly sweet and very nutty Mr. McKenzie`s Oatcakes, and the thin, crunchy and cheesy Old Tam`s Cheese Oatcakes.
”Lady Maclean`s Cook Book” can be obtained by sending an International Money Order for $20 to Mrs. Laura Huggins, The Creggans Inn, Strachur, Argyll PA27 8BX, Scotland.
