Parkin

Rather than eating it fresh from the oven, people enjoy the moist stickiness it develops a few days later. Parkin, from the north of England, is a baked sweet made with oats, ginger and dark syrup. It is popular in Yorkshire and Lancashire and is indispensable on Bonfire Night, 5 November. It comes both as a thickly baked cake and as thin biscuits, and its texture changes depending on how the oats and syrup are handled.

Granular Oats and Two Kinds of Syrup

The oatmeal combined with the flour is medium or coarse ground and granular. It leaves a fine bite that differs from that of large, thin flakes. Some recipes add cinnamon or mixed spice to the ginger.

Blackish-brown black treacle, amber golden syrup and brown sugar provide sweetness and colour. Black treacle has a dark colour and a deep flavour, while golden syrup has a light colour and a gentle sweetness. A regional difference is well known, with dark syrup used in Yorkshire and light-coloured syrup in Lancashire, but many households use both.

The fat, syrup and sugar are melted over a low heat without being boiled down hard, then added to the flour, oats and spices; egg or milk is mixed in and the batter is poured into a tin. Besides butter, lard or margarine may be used as the fat, and bicarbonate of soda or self-raising flour is used to make it rise.

Leaving It for Several Days After Baking to Turn Moist

It is baked in a square tray, a round tin or a loaf tin. Some methods bake it slowly at a low temperature, at 140°C for about an hour and a half, while others bake it at a high temperature for a short time, depending on the flour, the syrup and the tin. It is left to settle in the tin, cooled completely and placed in an airtight container.

After a few days to about a week, the crumb becomes moist and cohesive, and the stickiness of the syrup comes through. Golden syrup contains invert sugar, in which part of the sucrose has been split into glucose and fructose, and it is humectant, holding on to moisture. Dark treacle is also blended with syrup obtained during the sugar-refining process, which contributes a moist texture as well as sweetness and colour. It is sealed only after it has cooled completely so that moisture escapes less easily and the moist state is kept. When it is eaten, only the amount needed is cut and served with tea.

A 1729 Court Record and the Shift from Thin Bakes to Cake

An Elland court record cited by the University of York’s historical dictionary contains a passage stating that in 1729 a mistress persuaded a woman to ask Sarah Priestley to steal the master’s flour and make parkin. The custom of making this sweet appears even within an everyday dispute over grain flour.

According to the same dictionary, which draws on the research of food historian Peter Brears, early parkin was a thin oat bake placed directly on a flat griddle called a bakestone. From the mid-19th century onwards, ovens and bicarbonate of soda came into use, and thicker cakes could also be baked. The name is said to derive from a pet form of Peter or from the surname Parkin, but its exact etymology is not known.

Records of syrup being used are said to go back to the early 18th century. The syrup of that time is distinguished from the product sold today under the trade name golden syrup.

Production in a 19th-Century Confectioner’s and Making It as a Biscuit

Terry’s recipe book (a record of ingredient proportions and methods), begun in 1834 and held by the University of York, includes treacle parkin alongside foods and medicinal products. It was made in a small factory in Stonegate and sold at the shop in nearby St Helen’s Square. Homemade keeping sweets and batch-produced commercial goods existed side by side in the 19th century as well.

Small parkin biscuits are made by rubbing fat into flour, combining it with oats, ginger and the two syrups, rolling the mixture into balls and baking them so that they are crisp outside and soft in the centre. The closely related thar cake is a thin bake made by working together oats, lard and a little treacle.

While dry biscuits are known in Hull and East Yorkshire, cakes made with the two syrups that become even moister after a few days are also made there. The parkin made at the Hull History Centre, following a recipe taken from “The Yorkshire Dalesman”, is of the latter kind. Even under the same regional name, the way it is eaten differs depending on whether it is baked thin and crisp or baked thick and left to rest.

A Cake Eaten on Bonfire Night and Pig-Shaped Parkin

5 November is a night of bonfires and fireworks commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The university’s dictionary also records a custom of shaping parkin into pigs and giving them raisin eyes. Unlike a cake cut into slices, each pig shape can be enjoyed individually.

A sweet made with oats and syrup, which were widely available in the north, became a food for the nights leading into winter. In the bonfire season, people eat the pig-shaped sweets one at a time and also cut and enjoy cake that has been left for a few days.

Glossary