Derbyshire oatcakes

Derbyshire oatcakes are similar to Staffordshire oatcakes, but while following a similar recipe Derbyshire oatcakes contains a small amount of milk in the mixture. they are generally larger in diameter, thicker and when uncooked lighter in colour. For example, a recipe that would make four Derbyshire oatcakes might generally make twelve of the Staffordshire. There are some sources which have suggested that the thicker, puffier and milky oatcake of Derbyshire was a form of one-upmanship to make it appear that Derbyshire was more prosperous although there is scant literary support for any such reasoning. Despite this, there has been a long standing rivalry between who came up with the oatcake first. ^[9]

Lancashire and Yorkshire oatcakes

A Lancashire oatcake bears a passing resemblance to a Derbyshire oatcake, but is made without wheat flour or milk, and shaped as an approximate 11-by-6-inch (28 cm × 15 cm) oval, smooth on one side and rough on the other, and traditionally cooked on a bakestone. It may be eaten moist, rolled up like a pancake with a filling, or dried hung over a rack until a crisp cracker. The dried version served with a beef and cowheel stew is known as "stew and hard".^[10] Once common throughout Lancashire, it is now rarely found. The same cake is also cooked in West Yorkshire and Craven, and is thus sometimes referred to as the Pennine oatcake, although in Yorkshire the recipe often incorporated approximately 20% buttermilk.^[11][12]

In Lancashire and Yorkshire, oatcake was a staple of the diet up to around 1910^[13] Up to the 18th century, oatcakes were often called "havercakes", from hafr, the Old Germanic word for oats,^[14] but that name only continued to be used in the North Riding of Yorkshire and Teesside for a different kind of oatcake that is thick with no yeast.^[13] The word is perpetuated in the nickname "The Havercake Lads" for the 33rd Regiment of Foot and also in the term haversack.