#247: O is for Oats
A brief history of oats and five sweet and savory recipes to make with them.
O is for Oats
Oh Oh Oh! I do love me some oats and cook, bake, and eat them with great (pardon the pun) regularity. So today let’s learn a little of their history and enjoy some easy to make recipes, too.
Two Upcoming Classes
The Tips and Tricks of Gluten Free Pie Dough
Friday August 9th at 8 AM Pacific/11 AM Eastern/4PM GMT
This special one-hour session will be held on Zoom on Friday August 9th and is a part of paid subscriptions. More info here.
Bake with Kate: Sunset Mousse Chiffon Pie
Sunday August 11 11AM Pacific/ 2PM Eastern/ 7PM GMT.
Sunday August 11th is the next Bake with Kate Virtual Workshop
and we’ll be making a Sunset Mousse Chiffon Pie, a peach raspberry chiffon filling, an easy to make press-in crust, and a raspberry orange whipped cream topping. The two-hour virtual workshop will begin at 11AM Pacific/ 2PM Eastern/ 7PM GMT.
A Brief History of Oats
Oats are the grains of Avena sativa, a grass most likely from southwest Asia has been cultivated as far back as 2500 B.C.E.. The Greeks and Romans considered oats a weed, but as oats could be grown at higher altitudes and colder climates it became an important crop in northern Europe. Back in those olden days oats were mainly fed to horses and cattle and, when hulled, used to make broth, porridge and gruel—a word which has always sounded rather unappealing to me.
Oats, a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
—from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
First planted in North America on Elizabeth Island near the Massachusetts coast, by 1626 they were grown by the Dutch in New Netherland, and in Virginia before 1626. Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), the Joy of Cooking of that day, has a few recipes that use oats1
as does her lesser known The Complete Confectioner, Or, Housekeeper's Guide. 2
By the 1800s oat groats, oat grits, and oat meal were found in grocery stores and sold in bulk. In 1877 Henry D Seymor and William Heston, who established The Quaker Mill and developed rolled oats, registered the first trademark for a breakfast cereal with the pure Quaker man below.
Their company went bankrupt and was bought by Henry Parsons Crowell in 1881 who launched the first national advertising campaign with directions for cooking oatmeal printed right on the outside of the Quaker Oats box. In later years the box featured oatmeal bread and cookie recipes.
There were even three Quaker Oats train trips from Cedar Rapids, Iowa that crossed the country in 1890, 1892, and 1897, promoting oats with flyers and samples. How’s that for an advertising campaign?3
In 1901 The Quaker Mill merged with other mills to become the Quaker Oats Company4 and as of today it has been in business for 144 years.5
But let’s get on to some O recipes. Here are a few you might want to try. And if you have some favorite Os, I would love for you to share them with us in the comments!
RECIPES:
Hot Oats Sweet
Hot Oats Savory
Oatmeal Cookies
Maple-Oat Muffins with Crumble Topping
Oatmeal Sausage
