If your "tea cakes" (the word can mean several different things here)
could be made on a griddle, then they could well have come from the
poorer or more rural parts of Scotland. [...]
Tea Cakes are soft sugar cookies (biscuits in England).
Biscuits in England and Scotland are never soft; if they don't go crunch
they're cakes. That's why I was wondering what the heck "cookie" actually
means, it seems to cover a range of things we wouldn't think of having a
common name for.
Sources on the web say that Mrs. Dalgairns book was initially published
in 1829. The 1840 edition is on the web
THE QUEENıS TEA CAKES [posh recipe]
That has to have been added for 1840; no cookbook publisher would have
dared to name a recipe after Queen Caroline. And it must be an English
recipe as Queen Victoria didn't visit Scotland until 1842.
In the historical cookbooks at:
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/
Housekeeping in Old Virginia
By Marion Fontaine Cabell Tyree
Richmond, VA: J.W. Randolph & English, 1878
TEA CAKES [...two very plain recipes...]
These sound much more like something that could have been made in early
19th century Scotland. Try F. Marian McNeill's "The Scots Kitchen".
DELICATE TEA CAKES. [...expensive recipe...]
Maybe Meg Dods could have made that for Walter Scott but I doubt it
could have been regular food for anybody in Scotland.
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