This a -wartime (1939-45) recipe based on one from a book of country recipes in the Farmers Weekly of 1946. Farmers' wives were invited to send in their recipes, many of which had been passed down for generations and were known only to them. Quite a few recipes included oatmeal, both as a filler and as a substitute for flour. Oats and oatmeal stem from the time of the Greeks and Romans who regarded them as suitable food for their animals. However, the Romans encouraged the growing of oats in Britain and it became a popular food in Ireland, Wales and Scotland, where the climate and terrain favoured its growth rather than the other cereals. But the wealthier households in England shunned oats and it remained the food of the poor until the health-giving properties of oatmeal were discovered.