Flour and meal

[Johnyxxx]

Hi.

Can anybody tell me if "flour and meal" means something special here? The guy si going to camp on a small island, he has biscuits and some canned food (the tinned stuff) so I do not understand why he should need flour and meal with him.


"Of course all this only made me keener. Besides, it was called Skule Skerry, and the name could only come from Earl Skuli; so it was linked up authentically with the oddments of information I had collected in the British Museum--the Jarla Saga and Adam of Bremen and all the rest of it. John finally agreed to take me over next morning in his boat, and I spent the rest of the day in collecting my kit. I had a small E.P. tent, and a Wolseley valise and half a dozen rugs, and, since I had brought a big box of tinned stuffs from the Stores, all I needed was flour and meal and some simple groceries. I learned that there was a well on the island, and that I could count on sufficient driftwood for my fire, but to make certain I took a sack of coals and another of peats. So I set off next day in John's boat, ran with the wind through the Roost of Una when the tide was right, tacked up the coast, and came to the skerry early in the afternoon.

John Buchan, Skule Skerry, 1928.


Thanks a lot.

 

[SoothingDave]

Flour and (corn)meal. For making biscuits and corn bread, etc.

 

[GoesStation]

I'm not sure that meal referred to coarse-ground maize in 1928 Britain, but I don't know what other grain it could have been. Oatmeal, maybe?

 

[jutfrank]

I'm not sure that meal referred to coarse-ground maize in 1928 Britain, but I don't know what other grain it could have been. Oatmeal, maybe?

Yes, I don't think it refers to cornmeal. I'm not sure what it does refer to, but this being Scotland, I think oatmeal is very likely.

 

[jutfrank]

This page suggests to me that it does actually refer to oatmeal:

http://www.golspiemill.co.uk/products/products-list.html

 

[SoothingDave]

I'm not sure that meal referred to coarse-ground maize in 1928 Britain, but I don't know what other grain it could have been. Oatmeal, maybe?

I missed the bit about the British Museum.

 

[GoesStation]

This page suggests to me that it does actually refer to oatmeal:

http://www.golspiemill.co.uk/products/products-list.html

Or peasemeal. At any rate, maize ("corn" in American English) didn't feature much, if at all, in early twentieth-century Scottish camping rations.

 

[Tdol]

The definition I got in a search suggested that it would mean oatmeal in Scottish English.