My guest today is Mark Dawson, food historian, specialising in the food of the Tudor period, but also food of Derbyshire. We met up at Mark’s home in Derbyshire to talk all things Derbyshire oatcakes.
Mark and I talk about the oatcakes of Britain, doshens and sprittles, the usefulness of probate inventories, oatcakes as penance, and oatcake goblins – amongst many other things.
It’s available on all podcast platforms and YouTube. If you’re not a podcast/YouTube sort of person, listen here:
Those listening to the secret podcast can hear about other Derbyshire foods made from oats; a discussion about why oatcake is better than porridge; and I grill Mark on one very important matter: just what is the difference between a Derbyshire and a Staffordshire oatcake.
Follow Mark on Instagram @drdobba
Mark’s book Lumpy Tums: Derbyshire’s Food & Drink will be published by Amberley in April 2026
L to R: sprittle, slice and oatcake toaster (Derby Museum); an oatcake stone (Joan Clough); my attempt at a sourdough Staffordshire (shock-horror!) oatcake
Remember: Fruit Pig are sponsoring the 9th season of the podcast and Grant and Matthew are very kindly giving listeners to the podcast a unique special offer 10% off your order until the end of October 2025 – use the offer code Foodhis in the checkout at their online shop, www.fruitpig.co.uk.
If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.
Don’t forget, there will be postbag episodes in the future, so if you have any questions or queries about today’s episode, or indeed any episode, or have a question about the history of British food please email me at neil@britishfoodhistory.com, or leave a comment on the blog.
Saffron-scented buns, breads and cakes used to be enjoyed right across England from at least the 17th century. Today, however, they are typically found in bun form and are associated with Cornwall because, from around the 1780s, saffron was only grown in this area and Essex.[1]
A modern-day saffron bun is a lovely egg yolk yellow and has that lovely, unique earthy flavour associated with the spice. Other ingredients usually include mixed spice, dried fruit and a little sugar, and e enriched with a good amount of egg and clotted cream, though as Sam Bilton points out in Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron, Sarah Harrison’s 18th-century recipe contains no fruit, and the only spice used aside from saffron is coriander seed.[2] Early recipes are usually for single, large cakes such as Sir Kenelm Digby’s ‘excellent cake’, which is baked in a hoop and requires ‘a Peck of fine flower’. It’s enriched with (amongst other things) ‘one pint of Sack…half a pint of Rose-water [and] half a quarter of an ounce of Saffron.’ It is then iced with sugar and egg whites flavoured again with rose water.[3] Rosewater seems to have been a key ingredient because it’s still used a century later in John Farley’s London Art of Cookery (1783) and again in Cassell’s Dictionary of Food a century after that.[4] Perhaps it should be brought back?
Sir Kenhelm Digby’s ‘excellent’ saffron cake also contained rose water
Because of their expensive and rich ingredients, saffron buns are associated with celebrations and feast days. On Good Friday (a day associated with spiced buns), they were cut with a cross and brushed with a saffron wash and eaten with clotted cream.[5] At Christmastime, they were made into miniature cottage loaf shapes. They were also a special taste of home: folk of Newquay, when putting together Christmas food parcels to be sent to fighters during the Great War, were sure to include saffron cakes and buns.[6]
If you want to know more about the history of baking, check out my book Knead to Know, published by Icon Books.
According to Cassell, aside from providing colour and flavour, saffron makes buns or cakes ‘wholesome and palatable’, aids digestion and will ‘drive out intestinal worms’ to boot, and suggests swapping the liquid used in your favourite bun or cake recipe for saffron-steeped hot water that has been allowed to cool to blood heat.[7]
Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world by weight, and there was (and still is) therefore pressure for food manufacturers to use an adulterant such as yellow food colouring or turmeric to offset costs. Real saffron buns are appropriately (but proportionally) more expensive than your regular fruit bun, and according to Elizabeth David, the strands are not strained from their soaking water as one might expect, ‘probably as a visible sign that true saffron has been used.’[8]
But how much saffron to use? Amounts can vary greatly, and Sam Bilton wrestles with this question: she spotted that Elizabeth David complained about people using too much saffron in their cooking – true, it can taste soapy when over-applied – but then asks for four pinches in her recipe for buns![9] Of course, the answer depends upon a few factors: the quality of your saffron, how long it has been sitting in the spice rack, and how much you enjoy the flavour of saffron. My recipe uses ‘a good 2-finger pinch’.
This is what ‘a good 2-finger pinch’ looks like
If you want to know more about the history of saffron in Britain, have a listen to this episode of The British Food History Podcast with guest Sam Bilton:
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
Recipe
Makes 12 buns.
230 ml full-fat milk, plus extra for brushing.
A good 2-finger pinch of saffron
500 g strong white bread flour, plus extra for rolling
120 g mixed dried fruit (currants, raisins and sultanas)
Pour the milk into a small saucepan and bring to scalding point. Check to see if a skin has formed on the milk’s surface, if so, remove it before adding the saffron.[10] Whisk in the saffron strands and let the milk cool to ‘blood heat’ (about 40°C).
Mix the flour, yeast, salt, spice/s and sugar in the bowl of a tabletop mixer, make a well in the centre and add the eggs, clotted cream and saffron-infused milk. Attach a kneading hook, mix to combine on a slow speed and then turn up the speed a couple of notches and knead for around 6 minutes, until the mixture is smooth and elastic – it will still be a little sticky.
Add a little oil to a bowl and with oiled hands, gather up your dough into a ball and sit it in the bowl. Cover with cling film or a damp, clean tea towel until it doubles in size. Mine took 2 hours.
Knead the dried fruit into the dough, then divide into 12 (for precision weigh the dough), then line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
Roll each piece of dough into tight balls using a very small amount of flour to prevent it sticking and then arrange on the baking tray. Cover and allow to prove – this usually takes a third of the time as the first rising.[11]
Preheat the oven to 200°C and use the steam setting, or place a metal tray on the base of the oven and pour water into it.
Brush the buns with milk and place in the oven for 18 to 20 minutes. If they turn too golden brown, turn down the heat to 175°C.
When ready, remove from the oven and immediately brush with more milk and then throw a double layer of clean tea towels over them and allow to cool.
These are best eaten on the day they were made; any older than that, they should be toasted.
Notes:
[1] Davidson, A. (1999) The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press; Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press. It also prompts the question – why are there no famous Essex saffron bakes or dishes? Maybe there is.
[2] Bilton, S. (2022) Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron. Prospect Books.
[3] Digby, K. (1669) The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened (1997 reprint). Edited by J. Stevenson and P. Davidson. Prospect Books.
[4] Cassell (1883) Cassell’s dictionary of cookery. Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.; Farley, J. (1783) The London Art of Cookery, and Housekeeper’s Complete Assistant. Price.
[10] I speak from personal experience here: if you don’t remove the skin, the strands just get caught encapsulated in it.
[11] The best things to use to cover a whole tray of buns are a large shopping “bag for life”, an upturned plastic storage box or a damp, clean tea towel: take your pick.
A couple of posts ago I gave you my recipe for scones. As with many foods, there is a variety of baked things that are called scones, which can cause a certain amount of confusion (see also: pudding[1], bun and cake[2]). My recipe is for what I think most people would consider a ‘proper’ scone: cakey, slightly dry and crumbly and therefore served spread with lashings of jam and butter or clotted cream. In other words, the scone one receives when ordering a cream tea. Despite its modern link with Devon and Cornwall, the scone most certainly originated in Scotland. These scones were baked not in ovens but on girdles/griddles or bakstones/bakestones, and there are two main types: those made from a runny batter and baked on a lightly greased griddle, often called drop scones today, or ‘Scotch’ pancakes outside of Scotland.[3] The second type is more cakelike; a dough that may be shaped into one large round and baked whole as a bannock, or cut into triangles as scones. The scones may also have been made by rolling out the dough and cutting out rounds. However they were shaped, these scones were cooked on a lightly-floured girdle.[4]
Wheaten bread may have been used in both types of scone, but more often they were made from oats or barley and sometimes peasemealin the very north of Scotland.[5] For delicious potato scones, some of the wheat flour is replaced with leftover mashed potatoes. Scones are typically chemically raised with bicarbonate of soda activated usually with soured buttermilk, but seeing as the word scone goes as far back as the early 16th century, this cannot have always been so; chemical raising agents were not widely available until the latter half of the 18th century. I do see recipes that use yeast and others with no leavening at all. I strongly suspect that the early scones would have been made with sourdoughs.
This is a sowans scone – made with the sour liquid poured off from fermenting sowans instead of the usual cultured buttermilk
Recipes begin to travel south and cross the border. Jane Grigson mentions a Northumbrian scone that is made with wholewheat flour and is leavened by yeast.[6] F. Marion McNeill, writing in the 1920s observes that ‘scones [are] popular in England now, but there are no recipes in Beeton’s book’, meaning – of course – the fantastically comprehensive Beeton’s Book of Household Management of 1861.[7] There are several recipes for scones in Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1883) and Robert Wells’ Pastry & Confectioners’ Guide (1892).[8] Interestingly, none of them are baked in ovens despite many homes having ovens by this point in history.
However, in Good Things in England (1932), that wonderful collection of traditional English recipes by Florence White, there are recipes for scones baked both in ovens and on griddles. A variety of flours are being used too, including oatmeal and ‘Maize or Indian Meal’.[9] Baked scones – in England, at least – quickly take over and usurp not only the griddlecake variety of scones, but also the Devonshire/Cornish split in the cream tea.[10] But in the 21st century, these baked scones move even further away from their origins – egg is added for richness, milk is used over the now tricky to find buttermilk (in combination with baking powder).
For many folk, scones will be forever associated with the south-western peninsula of England, but it is important to remember, as Catherine Brown and Laura Mason put it in The Taste of Britain (1999): ‘Few English people would appreciate that [scones are] as Scottish as oatmeal porridge.’[11] I hope you appreciate it now!
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
[2] These are discussed in my book Knead to Know: A History of Baking (2024).
[3] These griddlecakes are also the forerunner to the sublime fluffy American pancake
[4] Buttery, N. (2024). Knead to Know: A History of Baking. Icon Books; McNeill, F. M. (1968). The Scots Kitchen: Its Lore & Recipes (2nd ed.). Blackie & Son Limited.
[5] Buttery, N. (2018, April 17). Pease Pancakes. British Food: A History.
[6] Grigson, J. (1992). English Food (Third Edit). Penguin. I have – of course – cooked this recipe as part of my Neil Cooks Grigson project all the way back in 2008. I didn’t do a very good job of it and it requires a revisit. Read the original post here.
Hello everyone. I do hope your Bank Holiday Weekend is going swimmingly and that you are enjoying the sunshine (& showers!).
I have uploaded my ‘Knead to Know’ Zoom talk from September last year to my YouTube channel. I know there were several people who couldn’t make it on the night. It’s completely unedited except for the Q&A section at the end.
I talked about how I approached writing Knead to Know: A History of Baking by asking myself, “What is baking?”, a trickier and more philosophical question than you might think; the origins and history of the very first bakers; Early Medieval bread and bakers; Yorkshire Christmas Pyes; and the Denby Dale Pie.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
You know what it’s like; you go to the home baking aisle of the supermarket and pick up a bag of flour, thinking ‘I’m sure I’m running low’, buy a bag, only to find there is, in fact, a large bag sitting, unopened, in the pantry. Unsure what to do with them, I asked social media whether I should make some scones, saffron buns or lardy cake with it (three recipes I have been meaning to post for years now). The answer came in: 3-way tie. I shall endeavour to do all three for you over the next month or so.
Up first, then, are scones, the must-have for a modern Cornish or Devonshire cream tea. I have written about cream teas both on the blog and in my book Knead to Know, the excerpt of which you can find on my YouTube Channel.
This is the recipe I used when I had both my restaurant and artisan market stall, so it is very tried-and-tested. I have provided some variations for you beneath the method: cranberry and orange, cheese, and walnut and Stilton. When the restaurant was open, we served a savoury cream tea using a cheese scone, swapped clotted cream for cream cheese and exchanged the jam for curried beetroot chutney or onion marmalade.
Classic recipes – especially Scottish and Irish ones – use buttermilk instead of plain milk. As buttermilk is increasingly difficult to get hold of these days, I’ve used milk, but you can swap the two. If you do, use 15 g bicarbonate of soda instead of 25 g baking powder. One final thing: I use strong white flour instead of plain to give the scones a boost in the oven, again, not traditional; in fact, it was a trick picked up from Paul Hollywood in his book 100 Great Breads. This doesn’t mean you can knead the dough roughly as though it is for bread; you still have to use a light touch with mixing, rolling and cutting out. Hopefully, my method will help you achieve great results.
I’ll follow soon with a post on the history of scones.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
Basic Scones
A note on measuring liquids: 1 ml of milk weighs 1 g, so it’s easier – and much more accurate – to weigh it on scales rather than reading the graduations on the side of the measuring jug.
Makes 12 to 15 scones.
500 g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
30g baking powder
½ tsp salt
75g butter
75g caster sugar
80g quartered glacé cherries, raisins or currants (optional)
200 ml/g whole milk
2 medium eggs
Egg wash: 1 egg or egg yolk beaten with ½ tsp salt
Granulated or Demerara sugar for sprinkling
Preheat your oven to 200°C.
In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt and rub in the butter – you can use the flat beater attachment on your mixer with this, or good old fingertips. Stir in the sugar and fruit (if using).
Beat the eggs with the milk, and steadily mix the liquids into the dry ingredients. If using a mixer, keep it at a slow speed. Make sure all the flour is incorporated, bring the dough together and give it a brief knead on a floured worktop until the dough is smooth.
Keeping your worktop floured, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1.5 to 1.75 cm (a generous ½ inch), and cut out into rounds. I normally use a cutter of a diameter between 7 and 8 cm. It is important to take care when cutting: make sure you dunk your cutter in more flour and tap off excess before cutting. This is important because if there are splodges of sticky dough on the cutter, it will seal the edges of the scones, preventing a good rise. Also, don’t be tempted to twist your cutter, as this will have a similar effect. Arrange the cut-out scones on 2 lined baking sheets.
Bring the leftover dough together with your hands to form a cohesive dough without kneading it too much – we don’t want tough scones! Roll out again and cut out. Repeat until all of the mixture is used up.
Brush with egg wash being careful not to let any dribble down the sides – again, this will hamper the rising of the dough – then sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and well risen. If there is uneven browning at the 10-minute mark, switch the trays around in the oven.
Cool on a rack.
Scones are best enjoyed on the day or the day after they are made. They do freeze well. Enliven them by popping them in the microwave for 10 to 20 seconds.
Eat with butter or clotted cream and jam.
Variations
Cranberry and Orange
Make as above, but add the zest of two oranges to the dry ingredients, and use dried cranberries instead of raisins or currants. Juice the oranges, pour into a measuring jug and top up with milk to 200ml/g.
Classic cheese scones
Use just 25 g caster sugar, and add 100 to 125 g grated Cheddar cheese once the flour has been rubbed in. If you like, you can add ½ teaspoon of dried herbs and a good pinch of Cayenne pepper. Use 230 g/ml of milk instead of 200 g/ml. Sprinkle some finely grated cheese (Parmesan is good) over the egg-washed scones before they go in the oven.
Walnut and Stilton scones
As above, but use 100-125 g grated Stilton and 80 g chopped walnuts
A hospitable Yorkshire housewife would consider her tea table was barely spread if it were not liberally supplied with these delicious cakes, constant relays of which should be served steaming hot.
A split and toasted fruit teacake, liberally spread with melting salted butter is one of life’s simple pleasures. For those of you who are not already in the know, a Yorkshire teacake is a round, slightly flattened, enriched, soft breadcake usually containing a little sugar, spice, dried fruit, and candied peel. There was a time when England had scores of regional fruited or enriched bread cakes and loaves, but they have largely gone by the wayside. Others that spring to mind are Bath buns, Wiltshire lardy cakes and Lincolnshire plum bread.[2] These types of cakes and breads are much more appreciated in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, or so it seems. The Yorkshire teacake has escaped its regional roots, so much so that it has lost its Yorkshire identifier and is simply called a teacake by most people.
Just-baked teacakes with plenty of salted butter
Yorkshire teacakes can be traced back to the opening decades of the 18th century when they were called ‘Yorkshire Cakes’. They will have been very expensive because they are enriched with eggs, butter, milk, and plenty of sugar and dried fruits.[3] By the 1880s, they are called Yorkshire teacakes.[4]
Working-class families enjoyed them too, but there was invariably less fruit, just a touch of sugar, half-and-half milk and water, no eggs and lard instead of butter. I like this more austere version, though I do go will all milk (full fat, of course) and much prefer lard to often over rich butter. Looking through recipes, the amount of lard varies greatly from a knob to over five ounces per pound of flour.
It’s very important that the teacakes are nice and soft. To achieve this, heed this excellent advice from Florence White:
Immediately after taking from the oven, rub over with buttered paper, and cover with a light, clean blanket; this gives a soft skin.[5]
When they are freshly baked they are lovely eaten untoasted, but any older than that and they must be split and toasted (or if you want to go hardcore Yorkshire, strong Cheddar cheese[6]).
It occurred to me that I hadn’t baked a batch of teacakes for a good few years, and I was thereafter craving them, so I baked a batch. They are so worth making at home and I give you my recipe, should you fancy having a go yourself.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
Recipe
This is quite a sticky dough and I would recommend making this in a stand mixer with a dough hook, but they can be made without one; just be prepared to be very sticky in the first 10 minutes of kneading. If you prefer plain teacakes, omit the fruit and spice and add half the sugar.
Makes 8 teacakes:
500 g strong plain flour, plus extra for kneading and shaping
30 g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
½ tsp mixed spice or ½ a grated nutmeg
80 g softened lard or butter, or a mixture
300 ml warm milk or half-and-half milk and water
Around 2 tbs vegetable or sunflower oil
80 g mixed dried fruit
30 g candied peel (optional)
Extra milk for brushing
Add the flour, sugar, salt, yeast and spices to a mixing bowl, make a well in the centre and add the softened fat, then tip in the warm liquid. Using a kneading hook, mix the ingredients on a slow speed until everything has combined, then turn up the speed a notch or two and knead for about 10 minutes until smooth – it won’t be very elastic because of the lashings of lard.
If you want to do this by hand, mix the ingredients with a wooden spoon. When thoroughly mixed, leave it to stand for 15 minutes or so; this gives the flour to absorb some of the liquid making for easier hand kneading. Knead on a lightly floured surface for around 15 minutes.
Brush a clean mixing bowl with the vegetable oil, gather up the floppy dough as best as you can (oil your hands, it makes this bit much easier), tuck it into a ball and pop it in the oiled bowl. Cover with a tea towel or cling film until it has doubled in size. This will take a while; even sat close to the radiator, my dough took over two hours.
Now take two baking sheets and line them with greaseproof paper and set aside.
Tip the dough onto a floured worktop and press out into a square, add the fruit and knead it into the dough. You do this step in the oiled bowl if you like. When everything is reasonably equally distributed, cut the dough into 8 equal-sized pieces. Using just a very little flour roll the pieces of dough into tight balls, then roll them out into circles with a floured rolling pin so they are 4 to 5 cm thick. Sit them on your baking sheets as you make them.
When you’ve done all 8, cover them with tea towels or place a container over them so they can prove again. In my experience the second proving takes about half the time of the first. As they prove turn your oven to 200°C fan (or equivalent). If you have a steam setting on your oven, use it. If you don’t, place a roasting tin in the bottom of the oven to heat up, and when you put your teacakes in the oven, tip some water into the now very hot tin and close the door.
Before and after the second proving
When they have doubled in size, brush them with milk and pop them in the oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Test whether they are ready by tapping the base of one: it should sound hollow.
Remove the teacakes from the oven and immediately throw a double layer of tea towels over them to keep them soft as they cool.
At the end of 2024, I gave you my recipe for Bakewell pudding. The plan was to follow with my recipe for Bakewell tart. Alas, life, Christmas and then a holiday to New Zealand got in the way.
But I always get around to things eventually and I give it to you today!
The Bakewell tart, despite it being dearly loved by Brits, was originally made as a cheap, dumbed-down version of the rich Derbyshire pudding: the puff pastry swapped for shortcrust, and the buttery almond filling swapped for an almond-flavoured sponge cake.
I write about the histories of the Bakewell pudding and tart in Knead to Know: A History of Baking, so pick up a copy if you want to know more.
I have been using this recipe for years now and it’s a real crowd-pleaser. When the restaurant was open, I served this tart warm with a lemon-flavoured cream and received a big bear hug from a diner: there could have been no better seal of approval in my book! The secret to its success is that I make a frangipane rather than a sponge cake filling, bound together with just a tablespoon of flour.
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Recipe
Makes 1 x 21 cm/8 inch tart
For the sweet shortcrust pastry:
200 g plain flour
100 g salted butter, diced (or half-and-half butter and lard)
50 g caster or icing sugar
1 egg, well beaten
Cold water (see recipe)
For the filling:
100 g salted butter, softened
100 g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g ground almonds
30 g self-raising flour
¼ tsp almond extract
3 or 4 tbs raspberry jam
30 g slivered almonds
First, make the pastry: Place the flour and fat(s) in a mixing bowl and rub the fat in until the mixture resembles fresh breadcrumbs. You can do this by hand using fingertips or with the flat beater of a stand mixer on a slow speed. Make a well in the centre and add most of the egg. If using a stand mixer, slowly mix it in, pouring more egg into any dry patches. If doing by hand, use a butter knife to mix (this prevents overworking of the dough). You should have a cohesive dough that can be brought together with your hand – if it does seem dry, add a tablespoon of cold water.
Knead briefly, cover and allow to rest in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 180°C and place a baking tray on the centre shelf
On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the pastry to the thickness of a pound coin, and use it to line an 8”/20 cm loose-bottomed tart tin or ring.[1] Prick the base with a fork and place it back in the fridge to firm up.
Now make the filling: using a hand beater or stand mixer, beat together the soft butter, caster sugar, eggs, almonds, flour and extract until smooth.
Take the pastry out of the fridge and spread jam over the bottom leaving a centimetre gap all around the inside edge. Spoon or pipe the mixture first around the edges and then the centre (this stops the jam from rising up the sides of the pastry lining), levelling off with a spatula.
Sprinkle with the slivered almonds and slide the tart onto the hot baking sheet and bake for 40 minutes, turning the heat down to 160°C if the top gets too brown. Cool on a rack, and remove from the tin when just warm.
[1] You will find that there is excess pastry – make some nice jam tarts or turnovers.
Hello there folks. A very quick post just to let you all know that I am giving two free talks this December.
The first is taking place at Manchester Central Library at 6pm on 5 December and is entitled The History of Pies & Puddings. Because it’s December I shall be looking at some festive examples but also a few other favourites. There will also be some of the library’s antiquarian cookery books to view as part of it. Book your spot here.
The second is a free Zoom talk on 17 December at 7pm (GMT) called The Philosophy of Puddings where I will look at the history of this very British food in the kitchen and in our culture. Will any of your favourites be mentioned?Book your spot here.
There are new events cropping up all of the time so make sure that you check the Upcoming Events tab regularly.
Looking forward to seeing some of you there!
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
In my book Knead to Know: A History of Baking, I made sure that there was a full chapter focussing on griddlecakes: food baked on hearthstones, bakestones and iron griddles. Of course, when writing the chapter, I took much inspiration from Jane Grigson’s baking recipes in English Food. I was surprised by the great variety. These days the English barely think beyond the crêpe.
It’s been a while since I posted a recipe for a griddlecake, and I have had this one, for singin’ hinnies, waiting in the wings for a while. These little cakes are a rather forgotten speciality of Northumberland. I first made these for the Neil Cooks Grigson project in its very early days and I didn’t do a great job of interpreting Jane’s recipe.[1] I have improved greatly since then. The real prompt to get this recipe out there was my conversation with Sophie Grigson, Jane’s daughter, for a recent episode of The British Food History Podcast all about Jane’s work. The topic of singin’ hinnies cropped up because Jane’s entry for it in English Food is particularly evocative. Listen to the episode here:
These griddlecakes, enriched with lard and butter and sweetened only by dried fruit, were eaten by all, and were especially at children’s parties where tuppeny and thruppenny pieces were hidden inside.[2] These once ubiquitous cakes were, for many families, sadly the ‘substitutes for the birthday cake [they] could not afford.’ The word ‘hinnie’ is a dialect one for honey, a term of endearment, and the ‘singin’’ refers to the comforting sizzle of the butter and lard from the cooking griddlecakes, although Jane does point out that ‘the singin’ hinnies made less of a song for many people as they could not afford the full complement of butter and lard.’[3]
I have found other mentions of singin’ hinnies elsewhere but recipes and descriptions are very vague. I did find two nineteenth-century descriptions that really emphasised their importance at the dinner tables of miners – Northumberland being very much a colliery county. The job required very calorific food, so these griddlecakes served an important function. One stated that ‘miner’s food consisted of plum pudding, roast beef and “singing hinnies”.’[4] Another, written by J.G. Kohl, a German travel writer, informs us that ‘[the colliers] even have dishes and cakes of their own; and among these I was particularly told of their “singing hinnies”, a kind of cake that owes its epithet “singing” to the custom of serving it hissing hot upon the table…They are very buttery, and must never be absent on a holiday from the table of a genuine pitman.’[5]
Jane reckons they are the second-best British griddlecake; for her, Welsh cakes take the top spot.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
Recipe
I give you my interpretation of Jane’s recipe with more precise ingredients and method. I have found all other recipes to be either too vague in the amount of liquid that should be added, or, when specific, far too dry. I do hope you find this recipe clear; I know it must work because the hinnies sing loud and true as they cook on the griddle.
A proper singin’ hinnie should be made with equal amounts of butter and lard. If you are vegetarian, avoid using shortening such as Trex, instead go posh and use all butter.
Makes 24 to 28 griddlecakes
500 g plain flour, plus extra for rolling
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
125 g lard, diced
125 g butter, diced
180 g dried mixed fruit
220-240 ml milk
Extra lard for frying
Extra butter for buttering the insides of the singin’ hinnies
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, then rub in the lard and butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then add the dried fruit and mix again.
Make a well in the centre, add most of the milk and mix to make a nice soft dough – it’s a good idea to use the old-fashioned method of combining everything using a cutting motion with a butter knife; that way you ensure the liquid is combined with the other ingredients without overworking the gluten in the flour. Add the remaining milk should there be any dry patches.
Lightly flour your worktop and knead the dough briefly so that it becomes nice and smooth. Let it rest as you get your bakestone, griddle or pan ready.
Place the bakestone on a medium heat and allow to get to a good heat; because there is no sugar in the mixture, the cakes don’t burn easily.
As you wait for it to heat up, roll the dough on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of around ¾ centimetre and cut out rounds. I used a 7-centimetre cutter, but 6- or 8-centimetre cutters will be fine. You might find it easier to cut them out if you dip your cutter in flour and tap away any excess. Reroll the pastry and cut out more.
Take a small piece of lard, quickly rub it over the surface of the bakestone and cook your first batch: mine took 5 to 6 minutes on each side to achieve a nice golden brown colour on the outside and a fluffy interior (I sacrificed one to check inside). Split each one with a knife and add a small pat of butter, close and keep them warm in the oven on a serving plate as you cook the rest.
Serve warm with your favourite toppings. I went with good old golden syrup (and an extra knob of butter).
I have been thinking and reading about baked goods rather a lot this year, having written Knead to Know: A History of Baking (out 12 September, preorder here). One thing I mention in the book is the activity we in Britain no longer partake in: dipping little sponge cakes in sweet alcoholic drinks. The closest we get to this is when we soak them in booze for a trifle, but fewer and fewer of us are making traditional trifles these days, I’d say.[1] Cakes made especially for dipping are well known: financiers, madeleines, boudoir biscuits (which are actually dry cakes). We used to dunk cake in wine though, and even came up with one of our own (the ones listed above are all French in origin); the now rather passe Madeira cake. It’s dismissed as a rather dry, plain sponge cake,[2] and perhaps it is, but that’s because we are no longer consuming it in the way it was designed to be, as Jane Grigson tells us in English Food, ‘this cake was served with Madeira and other sweet wines in the nineteenth century.’[3]
Madeira is a sweet wine made on the island of the same name (sugar was made there in the early modern period[4]), and it was a popular export to Britain from the seventeenth century.[5] The first time recipes for cakes specifically made for dipping in wine pop up in handwritten manuscripts from the eighteenth century, and the first printed recipe for Madeira cake (according to Laura Mason and Catherine Brown) appears in Eliza Acton’s 1845 classic Modern Cookery for Private Families.[6]
To produce a cake that can be successfully dipped without breaking up, it must be made on the dry side compared to, say, a pound cake or Victoria sponge: more flour is used, and no extra liquid is added (there’s no dropping consistency here). Whilst searching the internet for recipes, I spotted that people commonly search for ‘moist Madeira cake’ recipes. Well there is no such thing, it isn’t supposed to be moist. Yes, there are recipes to be found on the internet for apparently moist Madeira cakes that include additional ground almonds, milk and/or a reduced amount of flour. Well, you can do that, of course – be my guest, it will be delicious I’m sure – but it will no longer be a Madeira cake.
Creating lift is very important when it comes to sponge cake-making, and in Eliza Acton’s recipe, it is achieved by whisking eggs and sugar until frothy, before folding in flour mixed with a little ‘carbonate of soda’, and then cold, melted butter.[7] We’d call this a genoise-style cake these days. Recipes today use the more familiar creaming method and more raising agent, but don’t be tempted to use self-raising flour – that would give the mixture too much of a boost; we’re aiming for small, densely packed, bubbles here, so a more restrained amount of baking powder is required.
The characteristic crack of a loaf-shaped Madeira cake is most pleasing, but only achieved because a dry mixture is used.
Older recipes ask for Madeira cake to be cooked in a round tin (or hoop), but I prefer baking mine in a 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin.[8] I like the characteristic crack you get that runs down the length of the baked cake. Very pleasing. When it comes to flavouring, just a little lemon zest is traditional. Some ask for a decoration of candied citron strips, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
This recipe is adapted from the one given by Jane Grigson in her classic tome English Food,[9] first published in 1974, making it 50 years old this year!
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175 g softened, salted butter
175 g caster sugar
275 g plain flour
1 level tsp baking powder
4 large eggs (or 4 medium eggs + 1 tbs milk)
Grated zest of a lemon
Preheat your oven to 160°C, then line a 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin with baking paper.
Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy with your beaters, a most important stage as it seeds lots of air bubbles in the batter, making for a lighter cake. Now crack the eggs into the mixture one at a time: put the beater on a medium speed, add your first one, and when fully combined, add the next. If the egg and butter mixture begins to curdle (and it probably will after egg number two), add a spoonful of flour and beat on a medium-high speed until incorporated fully, then continue until all of the eggs are used up.
Mix the flour and baking powder, and tip into the mixture along with the lemon zest. Stir on a slow speed until the mixture is smooth. If your beater’s slow speed isn’t that slow, it is better to mix in the flour by hand. If you used medium eggs, add the milk at this point and mix into the batter.
Spoon the mixture into the lined loaf tin and level off. Bake for 1 hour (though check after 50 minutes) until cooked through. Do the good old test of pressing the cake with a finger: if it springs back, it is ready. You can always skewer the cake with a wooden toothpick to see if it comes out clear of any uncooked batter.
When ready, cool in the tin on a wire rack. Best eaten within the first 24 hours of baking.
Notes
[1] In Britain, the only thing we’re dunking is our biscuits in our tea.
[3] Grigson, J. (1992). English Food (Third Edit). Penguin.
[4] This is covered in Buttery, N. (2022). A Dark History of Sugar. Pen and Sword History.
[5] Mason, L., & Brown, C. (1999). The Taste of Britain. Harper Press.
[6]Ibid. I searched too and could not find an earlier example.
[7] Acton, E. (1845). Modern Cookery For Private Families. Quadrille.
[8] Most recipes, even modern ones, describe loaf tins by the weight of bread dough they are designed to bake: 450g (1 lb) or 900g (2 lb). Exact dimensions vary, but in the case of a 900g (2lb) tin, the dimensions are around 21 cm long x 11 cm wide x 7 cm high.
British Food: A History 