Hull History Centre

History Bakers: Scotch Crumpets (The Great British Bake Off - Week 3 - Bread)  

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year, staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With bread week a few weeks ago, here is a recipe for Scotch Crumpets. Is it a crumpet or Pancake?

Image: C DCT/1716/2 page 11

Finding a suitable bread recipe proved a lot harder than I had first anticipated. A great deal of the historical recipes are sweet, with only a few sources breaking out into the savoury baking/cooking world. I finally settled on ‘Scotch Crumpets’ as I had always wanted to give crumpets a go and thought this to be the perfect opportunity. Full disclosure, they are definitely more of a pancake than a crumpet, but they are still very yummy, quick and easy. This recipe comes from C DCT/1716/2 – Anlaby Road Methodist Church recipe book.

Ingredients:

2 Teacups full of flour

1 tsp butter

1 tsp golden syrup

½ tsp salt

½ teacupful of sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 egg

½ pint of milk (I used buttermilk as the recipe suggested sour or buttermilk if possible)

Method: 

This is probably the easiest pancake recipe I have tried. Minimal measuring, put it all into a bowl, mix it all up and it’s good to go. The most difficult part of the recipe was deciding on the size of teacup to use to measure the flour and sugar. In the end I settled on a medium teacup, which yielded around 25 – 30 small pancakes in total. 

After combining all of the ingredients and giving it a quick stir I was ready to make the crumpets/pancakes. 

As with any pancake recipe, the first one you cook is always the practice one, and these scotch crumpets were no exception. I dreadfully burnt the first batch trying to gauge how long to cook them for before turning, as there were no clear instructions within the recipe other than ‘turn once’. I decided to go with the basic rule of thumb and turn when small bubbles show on the surface of the pancake. This proved too long for the level of heat, so I ended up with black and charred little rounds. 

Image: First attempt!

On my second go I was more measured in my approach. I turned down the heat and cooked them slower, making sure I watched them. This batch turned our perfect and proved to be light and airy little sweet rounds of pancake. 

The recipe states using a teaspoon measure of mixture for each little pancake and this worked well, although they are quite time consuming as I had to do them in about 5 batches to cook all of the mixture. 

In the end they turned out rather well, the staff at the History Centre enjoyed them also. This is now my go to pancake recipe and I will be making them again. If you decide to give them a try, try toasting them in the toaster to make them a little crispy. 

Image: The finished pancakes/crumpets

Comments:

‘Perfectly fluffy scotch pancakes! Yum’ – Joey

‘Tastes divine – I would say fluffy scone!’ – Caoimhe

‘Delicious, lovely and soft’ – Debbie

‘Really delicious sweet flavour and so soft, definitely more of a pancake but a delightful one! Could eat the whole bag’ – Rachel

‘Delightful little pancake, perfect texture and sweetness for me’- Sol

‘Nice and cakey, tastes great’ - Kyle