> I am specifically trying to figure out the origin of the Southern (as in
> American South) cookies called "tea cakes." They are likely the "little
> cakes" that early bakers created by dropping small amounts of cake
> batter in the pan to test the temperature of their ovens.
>
> I found a recipe for tea cakes in The Practice of Cookery by Mrs
> Dalgairns, first published in 1829 in Scotland. The recipe is
> essentially the same as my grandmother's recipe. So, I am working on
> the assumption that they are probably goodies out of 18th century
> Scotland, a time when their was a great deal of immigration of Scots to
> the South.

Recipe books were written for relatively wealthy people who would
have had ovens in their houses. Most of the population of Scotland
didn't, as late as 1829, and I doubt if any higher a proportion of
Southern American colonists did.

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. If they needed an oven then
they would presumably have been confined to slaveholders (who could
well have bought cookbooks like Mrs Dalgairns's) and spread more
widely as ovens became more widely available.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
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