Scottish Cookery E-Book

Catherine Brown

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 633

Beschreibung

Attitudes to food and cooking have undergone a radical transformation in recent years, and the concept of using local produce has revolutionised the culinary world. Nowhere has this been taken up more enthusiastically than in Scotland, which boasts a vast and varied assortment of home-grown produce, including cheese, fish, game and vegetables. Catherine Brown's acclaimed Scottish Cookery was one of the first books to highlight the richness and diversity of Scotland's local larder, explaining how to get the best out of such ingredients in hundreds of mouth-watering and imaginative recipes. This new edition features all the original recipes which sealed the book's reputation as the leading Scottish Cookery book, as well as many new dishes, fascinating culinary anecdotes and practical information on sourcing Scottish produce. Contents includes: Oats and Barley; Fish; Shellfish and Seaweed; Game; Beef and Lamb; Fruits, Sweets and Puddings; Vegetables, Soups and Other Dishes; Sugar and Spice, Cakes and Baking, Scottish Sweeties and Preserves; Cheese; Culinary Interchange.

Leseprobe

SCOTTISH COOKERY

Catherine Brown became widely known during the 1980s and 90s for her investigative food columns in The Herald (Scotland) and as a presenter of STV and Grampian TV’s Scotland’s Larder. She was the Guild of Food Writers’ Food Journalist of the Year in 2001 and is the author of several books on Scottish food, including her acclaimed Scottish Seafood. She recently edited and introduced a major new edition of F. Marian McNeill’s The Scots Kitchen. Her time is divided between a small village in Perthshire and an even smaller village on the shores of Loch Torridon. She can be visited at www.foodinscotland.co.uk.

This ebook edition published in 2013 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

First edition published in 1985 by Richard Drew Publishing Limited Second and third editions published in 1999 and 2006 by Mercat Press Limited Fourth edition published in 2013 by Birlinn Ltd

© Catherine Brown, 2013

Illustrations by Jane Glue

The right of Catherine Brown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ebook ISBN: 978-0-85790-635-9 ISBN: 978-1-78027-108-8

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WEIGHTS, MEASURES & ANGLO-AMERICAN TERMS

1: OATS

Girdle Oatcakes; Oven Oatcakes; Porridge; Brose; Oatmeal Brose; Pease Brose; Atholl Brose; Buttered Oats Brose; Bannocks; Beremeal Bannocks; Barley Bannocks; Orkney Beremeal Bannocks; Sauty Bannocks; Mealie Puddings and Skirlie; Oatmeal Bread or Rolls; Buttermilk Bread; Clootie Dumpling; A Wee Cloutie; Sweet Haggis; Sweet Oaten Pudding with Raspberries; Buttered Oats; Dutch Apple Cake with Buttered Oats; Rhubarb and Bananas with Cinnamon Buttered Oats; A Swiss/Scots Breakfast.

2: SEAFOOD: FISH

Baked Salmon in Butter; Grilled Salmon Steak; Grilled Thick Fillets of Salmon or Other Fish; Potted Salmon; Salmon Broth; Baked Brown Trout with Herbs and Lemon; Fresh Herring or Mackerel in Oatmeal; Fresh Herrings as Dressed at Inveraray; Open Arms Herring with Drambuie Butter; Grilled Herring or Mackerel with Mustard; Soused or Potted Herring or Mackerel; Soused Herring Shetland Style; Sweet Spiced Herring; Potted Kipper; To Cook Kippers; To Salt Herring; Tatties ’n’ Herring; Marinated Salt Herring; Salt Herring Salad with Beetroot and Mushrooms; Whole Fish Baked; Fish and Chips; Fresh Haddock in Mustard Sauce; Grilled Haddock with Lemon and Parsley Butter; Rizzared Haddock or Blawn Whiting; East Coast Fishwife’s Broth (Cullen Skink); Finnan Haddock with Cheese Sauce; Baked Smoked Haddock and Poached Egg; Smoked Haddock with Bacon; Buttered Smokie with Toast; Smokie Kedgeree.

3: SHELLFISH & SEAWEED

Scallops in Butter with Shallots and Garlic; Steamed Scallops in Cream Sauce; Oysters on Skewers with Bacon; Mussel Brose; Mussels and Cockles in Garlic and Olive Oil; Clabbies or Mussels in a Leek and Tomato Risotto; Partan Pies; Partan Bree; Boiled Lobster to Serve Cold as a Salad; Grilled Lobster; Lobster Soup; Fruits of the Sea; Shellfish Broth; Shellfish Sauce; Orkney Squid; Sea Moss (Carrageen) Jelly; Dulse Broth with Lamb or Mutton; Hebridean Dulse Broth; Dulse Cakes; To Make a Purée (Welsh Laverbread).

3: GAME & POULTRY

Braised Red Deer with Sloe Gin; Roast Rack of Venison; Venison Pasty with Port and Mushrooms; Venison Liver; Poca Buidhe (Yellow Bag); Venison Tripe; Roast Grouse; Grouse Soup; Roast Pheasant with Fresh Herbs; Braised Pheasant with Whisky and Juniper; Bawd Bree; Elsie’s Rabbit with Onions; Honeyed Rabbit; Cock-a-Leekie; Roast Chicken; Fried Chicken and Skirlie; Roast Turkey; Chestnut Stuffing; Herb and Lemon Stuffing; Cranberry and Orange Sauce; Bread Sauce.

4: MEAT

Boiled Beef; Scotch Barley Broth; Minced Collops (Mince and Tatties); Beef Olives; Beefsteaks; Spiced Beef; Beef Cooked in Claret; Forfar Bridies; Tripe Suppers; Veal Sweetbreads and Kidneys; Sweetbread Pie; Potted Hough; Lorne Sausage; Sassermaet; A Gigot of Mutton with Caper Sauce; Roast Rack of Lamb; Grilled or Barbecued Leg of Lamb; Slow-roast Lamb Shoulder; Pickled Blackface Mutton; Scotch Pies; Stuffed Lambs’ Hearts; Lamb’s Fry; Haggis; Ayrshire Bacon; Baked Ayrshire-cured Ham; Ayrshire Bacon Baps; Baked Pork Chops with Chappit Tatties; Slow-roast Pork Shoulder with Fennel.

5: VEGETABLES, SOUPS & OTHER DISHES

Stovies; Chappit Tatties; Oatmealed Potatoes; Dripping Potatoes; Tattie Scones; Tattie Soup; Steamed Leeks; Carrot and Bacon Soup; Glazed Carrots; Carrot Pudding; Honey and Cinnamon Carrot Cake; Rumbledethumps; Red Cabbage with Apples; Bashed Neeps; Orkney Clapshot with Burnt Onions; Stir-Fried Kale; Green Kale Soup with Ham; Broccoli Salad; Green Pea Soup; Minted Peas with Greens; Hotchpotch; Spring Vegetable Soup; Lentil Broth.

6: CHEESE

Toasted Cheese; Cheese and Eggs with Toast or Cauliflower; Hattit Kit; Cheesecake with Chocolate and Raspberries.

7: FRUITS & PUDDINGS

Fresh Soft Fruit on a Platter with Cream; ‘Gourmet’ Strawberries; How Escoffier Served Strawberries at the Carlton Hotel; Brandied Fruit Cup; Strawberries and Raspberries with Whipkull; Whipped Fruit Pudding; A Rich Ice-cream; Ettrickshaws Home-made Ice-cream; Fruit-flavoured Water Ice (Sorbet); Cranachan (Cream-Crowdie); Trifle; Caledonian Cream; Biscuits and Cream; Lemon Cream Soufflé; Syllabub; Soft Fruits with Scone Dumplings; Hazelnut Meringue Cake with Raspberries and Cream; Lemon Tart.

8: SUGAR & SPICE, CAKES & BAKING, SCOTTISH SWEETIES & PRESERVES

Shortbread; Tiree Shortbread; Rich Shortbread; Pitcaithly Bannock; Soda Scones; Sweet Milk Scones; Fruit Scones; Treacle, Honey or Syrup Scones; Cheese Scones; Sour Cream Scones with Raspberry Jam; Apple or Rhubarb Scones; Onion Scones; Soda Scone; Scottish Pancakes and Crumpets; Plain Cookies; Cream Cookies; Iced Cookies; Currant Cookies; A Special Yeast Cake; Mr Jimmy’s Spiced Cookies; White Floury Baps; Gingerbread Men and Women; Dark Gingerbread; Sticky Toffee Sauce; ‘Black’ Bun; Selkirk Bannock; Selkirk Bannock Toasts with Rum; Ecclefechan Butter Tart; Mincemeat ‘Streusel’; Sponge Cake; Cup Cakes and Tray Bakes; ‘A Cake with Apples in It’; Mincemeat Sandwich Cake; Maple Syrup Cake; Chocolate Sour Cream Cake; Dundee Cake; Almond Nutballs; Oat and Walnut Biscuits; Basic Sugar Boiling Process; Tablet; ‘Toffy for Coughs’; Chip Marmalade; Fortingall Marmalade; Raspberry or Tayberry Jam; Strawberry Jam; Rowan Jelly; Herb Jelly; Spiced Damsons; Apple Chutney; Raisin Chutney; Store Mustard; Pickle Vinegar.

9: CULINARY INTERCHANGE

O Ragu di Mama; Gratin Dauphinois; Tarte Tatin; English Rib Roast and Yorkshire Pudding; Sussex Pond Pudding; Irish Stew; Colcannon; Salt Herring with Leeks; Marinated Fried Herring; Pakora; Mrs Anwar’s Chicken; Chinese Crispy Roasted Belly Pork; Challah; Southern Crisp Fried Chicken with Corn Fritters; Brownies; Strawberry Shortcake.

EARLY SCOTTISH COOKERY WRITERS

HOUSEHOLD BOOKS, JOURNALS, LETTERS, DIARIES

BUYING GUIDE

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

The Past

While Maggie puts her girdle-baked barley bannocks and oatcakes on the table with some soft cheese, Alistair goes to lift the lid of the pot on the peat fire, taking out a piece of meat and bringing it to the table. It’s been in ‘the salt’ (a barrel of brine in the barn), he tells us. It comes, we discover, from one of his Blackies (Blackface sheep) which has roamed the rough hillsides for the best part of four years. We all get a piece of the mutton to eat with an oatcake. We marvel at its flavour. Afterwards, he chops up some kale and adds it to the pot and serves us platefuls of his broth, flavoured with barley, carrots, turnips and potatoes. Simple, sustaining and unforgettable.

I’d like to take you into the remote corner of the North West Highlands where these crofters lived. The date is 1972 and the place is a croft house on the Applecross peninsula in Wester Ross. Born at the beginning of the century, brother and sister, Maggie and Alistair, are in their seventies now and have lived here all their lives. A road has just been built round this coastline where the transport – until now – has been by boat or foot. It’s a wild night outside, but there is a warm glow from a peat fire and the pot on it, slowly simmering, is filling the croft house with its fabulous aromas.

This ingenious system of self-sufficiency, making the best use of an inhospitable landscape and harsh climate, is the basis of the ancient crofting system of agriculture where scarce fertile land is divided among the population and extensive grazing land is common for all to use. These Scots, in the past, could be described as poor Northern Europeans. Without material assets, they were naturally thrifty in their ways. Their frugal, largely meatless, diet was based on broths made with vegetables, dried beans and peas, barley and lentils; brose and porridge made of oats and barley; and everything supplemented with milk, cheese and butter. Meat was a relatively rare occurrence, since animals – especially cattle – were valuable capital assets for export, not eating. Fish, on the other hand, was everyday food. Wild game, sorrel, watercress, silverweed, seaweed, garlic, nettles, hazel and beech nuts, brambles, blaeberries, cloudberries and raspberries were seasonal treats.

Before the Jacobite rebellions of the 1700s, and the exodus to the New World in the 1800s, these Highland clanspeople were expert in preservation techniques: salting, drying and smoking. Their method of cooking was ruled by their source of fuel: mostly dried-out blocks of peat turf which burned with a slow, steady glow, creating a gentle source of heat suitable for slow-simmered broths and stews. Their method of baking on an iron girdle was also ruled by the gentle peat fire. Flat unleavened breads, known as bannocks, were cut into farls (quarters) and baked on a cast-iron girdle.

The gradual deterioration of the Highland economy, after the introduction of sheep farms and the growth of shooting estates in the 1800s, led to a much less varied diet as well as a great deal of poverty. When the people were moved from the fertile glens, and rehoused at the less fertile coast, their diet suffered. The potato became a staple. The large herds of hardy native cattle were replaced by the landlord’s sheep. Game, now sport for the landlord, was off the menu. Fish was their saving, a rich food supply which they exploited to the full.

South of what is called the Highland line from Stonehaven on the east coast to Dumbarton on the west, in the area described as the Lowlands, things were different. Here, there were larger areas of rich agricultural land, colonised by Benedictine and Cistercian monks in the Middle Ages. They had come with horticultural expertise and new varieties of fruits and vegetables. In other lowland areas there were also improving landlords who cleared stones, built dykes and enclosed fields. Using the Highlanders’ cattle as breeding stock, some developed new breeds of cattle which have become famous worldwide for their fine-flavoured beef.

This spirit of agricultural improvement brought with it an improvement in the diet. There were better supplies of fruits and vegetables. For the more affluent, meat became a more regular item of diet, though fish remained the predominant source of protein for coastal communities and their hinterland. High food value oatmeal – the great sustainer – had overtaken barley as the staple grain in everyday brose and porridge, taken with milk, and in oatcakes eaten with cheese. The vigour and endurance of the people recorded in Statistical Accounts, and also noted by visiting observers, was generally attributed to the high quality of their frugal, but nutritious, diet.

The social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, in the second half of the 1800s, altered this high quality diet. In the Lowlands it created urban slums, poverty and deterioration in diet. In the worst conditions, a kettle of boiling water for sugary tea to drink with slices of white bread and jam replaced the previous nutritious diet. In less dire conditions, the old thrifty rural diet survived in cheaply-made pots of broth using native vegetables, barley, peas and lentils along with inexpensive cuts of butcher meat. The cheap odds and ends of the carcass, tripe, liver, kidney, heart and head were highly valued. Black puddings, mealie puddings, sausages, mince and of course haggis were all useful adjuncts to the ubiquitous pot of potatoes.

Though the Lowland urban diet – at its worst – had nothing left of this previous culinary system, the rural diet survived better. It retained a more intimate link with the soil and its produce, continuing the old thrifty-cooking methods still to be found in the 1970s in Alistair and Maggie’s croft house. Like others of their generation they had lived through two world wars, and during the second one had joined with the rest of the nation in the fight to keep the nation at home fed. They were well-placed to survive in the worst-case scenario – the urban population less so. But wartime rationing to save the country from starvation jolted them into a new mindset. Suburban front lawns were dug up to grow potatoes and thrifty nose-to-tail cooking became a necessity for both urban and rural. It was a relatively brief period (1940-1954) but it improved the urban diet. Everyone re-connected, more meaningfully, with their food supply; remembering how to cook good-tasting meals which made the best use of the native-grown and locally-sourced ingredients of the frugal, but nutritious, old Scots diet.

The Future

Since the end of wartime rationing the healthy benefits of the old diet have steadily been eroded. In 2006, a report from a group of health professionals, interviewing schoolchildren about their daily diet, revealed that they often started the day with one or two packets of crisps (or quite often had no breakfast at all); for lunch they might have a pastry or a roll filled with chips; sweets and coke on the way home from school; and for dinner a sausage roll, bridie or pie with chips, followed by a bought trifle or jelly and ice cream.

A technological food revolution, driven by persuasive advertising, industrialised food manufacture, factory farming and multiple food retailing, has created huge efficiencies in production and distribution. Thousands of new food products liberate, and de-skill, those who buy and prepare food. The global marketplace provides strawberries every day of the year. Yet despite the convenience and sometimes cheapness of this system, the diets of some young people have way too high levels of salt, sugar and fats. Their simultaneous loss of health is now an issue. Educators have failed to provide them with the basic nutritional knowledge to eat healthily and the skills to cook food for themselves.

Action to improve Scotland’s poor health statistics was given impetus with the Scottish Diet Action Plan in 1996. It contained an ambitious set of targets which have yet to be achieved. Among the many activities it suggested, with the potential to make a difference, was setting up the government-funded Scottish Community Diet Project (now Community Food and Health). This targeted the most vulnerable in society, those most at risk from loss of health due to diet. Community food initiatives such as food co-ops and cafes, cooking and nutrition courses, and many other activities, have all focused on a health-improvement agenda. At a community-led initiative in Shotts, just outside Glasgow, they announced recently that their ‘Getting Better Together’ project had sold three million portions of fruit and veg.

Nothing can be more important – for future generations – than continuing the battle to achieve the targets set out in the 1996 Scottish Diet Action Plan. But the future also depends on those who shop for food and cook for themselves or their families asking some questions. Such as: Where does the food come from? How has it been produced? What’s in it?

In the past this was not a problem. Butchers, bakers, greengrocers, fishmongers, once prolific on every high street, were accountable to their customers who bought from them every other day. When suspicion and doubt first surfaced with the safety of eggs in 1988, it was not so easy to get answers to troubling questions about the integrity of the new food supply. Even more troubling questions about serious health issues emerged throughout the 1990s. Consumer reason and instinct began to challenge the wisdom of technology on everything from additives to genetically modified food and a consumer-led backlash was born.

An early global voice in this subversion was the Slow Food movement. Founded in Italy in 1986, it challenged the junk-food diet of the fast-food industry. Not just for its damaging effect on people’s health, but also for its damage to local food systems and traditional ingredients which are the lifeblood of local communities. Its founder, Carlo Petrini, was motivated by the arrival of the first fast food McDonalds restaurant in the centre of Rome. The movement now has followers in 150 countries.

Slow Food argues local rootedness, decentralisation and conservation of typicality. The benefits to communities of this approach are an improvement in diet; a reduction in pollution; the development of food-producing skills; and more money circulating locally – for every £1 spent in a supermarket, around 90p leaves the area, but every £1 spent in a local shop/market/farm-supplier doubles its value to the local economy.

Over quarter of a century old now, Petrini’s trailblazing movement has flourished. In Scotland, Slow Food’s call to subversion can be seen in new linked-up thinking, where regions with special food assets have taken up the challenge. In 1998, Argyll and the Islands Enterprise funded a local food networking project on the Isle of Arran which was published as an Arran Taste Trail. An independently written guide, it was about the producers of distinctive local foods and drinks and the shops, restaurants, cafes and hotels who were selling Arran produce. It was updated in two more editions and won a Scottish Thistle Award for best Tourism Project in 2000. It has now become the producer-led Taste of Arran brand, marketing Arran products on the island and beyond. In 2002 the first Food Network was set up in Ayrshire, growing from the Farmers’ Market movement. It, and others which have followed, have also increased the availability of the region’s food by setting up a membership of producers, farm-shops, delicatessens, hotels and restaurants committed to sourcing local produce.

The Soil Association took up a similar challenge with their Food Futures programme in the late 1990s. It was a three-year initiative, aimed at developing the local food economy in eleven areas of the UK, including three in Scotland: Dumfries and Galloway, Forth Valley and Skye and Lochalsh. Key individuals were brought together through workshops to investigate the potential and identify the problems. In Skye and Lochalsh there was the paradox of foreign visitors arriving in the Highlands and expecting to find the produce of Scotland’s cool, unpolluted waters – langoustines, scallops, crabs, oysters, lobsters – which they could enjoy in Paris, Rome, Madrid, New York and London. Yet they were having difficulty finding them here, in their place of origin. As a result of grants from Skye and Lochalsh Enterprise, and Community Food and Health, a producer-led Food Link network was set up with its own van to collect fresh produce, dropping off orders to hotels, restaurants and shops throughout the area. Since the first year, the value of produce kept in the area has increased by around seven hundred per cent.

Similar initiatives are also up and running in other areas. Enlightened chefs and restaurant owners are now geared-up to stating on menus such local produce information as the port where the fish has been landed or the native breed of beef. The Farmers’ Market movement has been an important motivator in the increased availability of local food. The first Scottish market in Perth in 1999 was a joint initiative between local food suppliers and the city council. Now seventy-one markets are established in towns and cities throughout the country.

Adding yet more power to reviving the nation’s food culture has been the consumer-led Fife Diet project. This was a daring move by its founders Mike and Maureen Small, and some friends, who pledged, in 2007, to eat only Fife produce for a year. Five years on, they have an organisation of over three thousand members, funded by the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, all pledged to making their diet 80% Fife food. It has not only reduced their personal carbon footprint hugely, but also motivated producers to meet their demands. Until the project began, Fife had no local cheese. It now has the St Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company at Falside Farm, where Jane Stewart took up the challenge, went on a cheese-making course, and now makes the excellent Anster cheese.

The momentum from all these initiatives has increased consumption of native and local ingredients. Cooking from scratch with them may not be as quick and easy as microwaving a ready-meal, but there are now liberating, time-saving gadgets and equipment which cut the time and effort. Food processors and liquidisers reduce time spent cutting, slicing and pureeing to a matter of seconds, and effort to almost zero. The microwave (especially a combination model with a convection oven and grill) reduces cooking times and is good for steaming fish and vegetables.

This book concentrates on Scottish ingredients: historic grains of oats and barley; fine seafoods; rich-tasting game; outstanding beef and lamb; slow-ripened soft fruits; hardy root vegetables; floury potatoes and distinguished cheeses. Dishes made with these ingredients bring with them an inherent quality and taste which demands that not too much is added and not too much taken away in the cooking/preparing process. And it also brings Scottish food into the twenty-first century with ingredients which continue to define the country. They have been the basis, in the past, of a diet which produced a nation of great vigour and endurance. What follows in these pages provides the means to maximise – in the future – the potential of Scottish cookery.

Catherine Brown, 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To each of the following I am particularly grateful for the time, information and encouragement which they gave while I was researching the first edition of the book. I hurled many awkward questions at them which they patiently answered: Dr J.J. Connell, Director, Torry Research Station, Aberdeen; Martha Crawford, Secretary of the British Deer Farmers Association, Cluanie, Beauly, Inverness-shire; Keith Dunbar of Summer Isles Foods, Achiltibuie; Sheila Harley, Scotch Quality Beef and Lamb Association; Peter Hick, Director, Reawick (Shetland) Lamb Marketing Company; Professor George Houston, Department of Political Economy, University of Glasgow; James Keay, Torry Research Station, Aberdeen; D.S. MacDonald, Oatmeal Miller and Grain Merchant, Montgarrie Mills, Alford, Aberdeenshire; Elizabeth MacIntosh, Scottish Milk Marketing Board; Professor A.D. Maclntyre, Director, Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen; Donald MacLean, Chairman of the National Vegetable Society, Dornock Farm, Crieff, Perthshire; Dr Donald McQueen, Marketing Director, Scottish Milk Marketing Board; Dr David Mann, United Biscuits, Glasgow; Rosemary Marwick of Howgate Cheeses, Penicuik, Midlothian; I.G.A. Miller, Oatmeal and Pearl Barley Miller, Kelso Mills, Roxburghshire; George Motion, Assistant Secretary, The Red Deer Commission, Knowsley, Inverness; Hamish and Livingston Neil of S.L. Neil Glasgow; Douglas Ritchie of Strathaird Sea Foods; J. Russell, Manager of the Company of Scottish Cheese Makers; Archie Sinclair, Caithness Smoking Company, Latheronwheel; Stewart Sloan of Robert Sloan, Butchers; Susanna Stone of Highland Fine Cheeses, Tain, Wester Ross; Dr Charles E. Taylor, Director, Scottish Crop Research Institute, Invergowrie, Dundee; Richard Van Oss, Director, The Game Conservancy, Fordingbridge, Hampshire; Joseph Walker of Walkers Shortbread, Aberlour; Gillan Whytock of the Advisory and Development Service, Agronomy Department, The West of Scotland Agricultural College, Auchincruive, Ayrshire.

Sincere thanks also to Iseabail MacLeod, Editorial Director of the Scottish National Dictionary, for editing the revised edition, also to Bruce Lenman, Professor of Scottish History at St Andrews University, and to Tom Johnstone of Birlinn for his helpful support.

For the use of their kitchens, as well as their stimulating company and help, reading and correcting recipes, my thanks to Joan Campbell and Catherine Braithwaite (my mother). And to many others who have helped in a practical way I am deeply grateful, for without their help also the book would simply not have been written.

WEIGHTS, MEASURES & ANGLO-AMERICAN TERMS

Converting from Imperial to Metric

Stick to one system throughout a recipe.

Conversion from one system to another may be an exact equivalent or it may be an approximation. A few grams here or there, in many recipes, will not affect the finished result. Where it will matter is in baking recipes, such as a cake which will sink if there are not enough ‘strengthening’ ingredients like flour and eggs, and too many ‘weakening’ ingredients like butter.

Scales: Balance or Digital?

Compared with less precise balance scales, digital scales provide not just a conversion function from imperial to metric but also the ability to measure the exact equivalent, in units of 1 gram, or hundredths of an ounce. For baking, and other recipes which require precision-measuring, digital scales provide a more guaranteed chance of success.

The most important exact conversions to remember are that 500 g is actually 1 lb 2 oz and 1 litre is actually 1¾ pints.

EXACT CONVERSION FROM OUNCES TO GRAMS AND TO NEAREST 25 G FIGURE

Imperial Ounce

Exact Gram

To nearest 25 g figure

½

14.5

15

1

28

25

2

57

50

3

85

75

4

113

100 or 125

5

142

150

6

170

175

7

198

200

8

227

225

9

255

250

10

284

300

11

311

325

12

340

350

13

368

375

14

396

400

15

425

425

16

453

450

Fluid Ounce

Exact equivalent

To nearest 25 ml figure

5 fl oz (¼ pint)

142 ml

150 ml

10 fl oz (½ pint)

284 ml

300 ml

15 fl oz (¾ pint)

326 ml

450 ml

20 fl oz (1 pint)

568 ml

600 ml

Imperial/Metric Conversion to Graduated Cups

American/Imperial Measures

American butter is packaged in 4 oz sticks, 4 to a box of 1 lb, which makes for easy and quick measuring, especially since they are usually graduated on the wrapping paper.

I have used the following table as a basis for conversion, though on occasions in the recipes I have had to adjust quantities to produce comparable results. Where the cup is described as scant then I have filled it to about ¼ in of the rim of the cup, while generous means that it was slightly heaped.

American names for commodities, where different from the British, are in brackets.

Standard Measuring Spoons

These are the same as the metric measuring spoons now widely available in Britain.

All spoon measures are taken as level.

For Liquids:

American spoons

Anglo-American Cooking Vocabulary

BRITISH

AMERICAN

Cooking terms:

Fry

Pan broil (without fat)

Pan fry (with fat)

Grate

Shred

Grill

Broil

Gut

Clean

Knock back

Punch down

Prove

Rise

Sieve

Sift

Commodities not already mentioned in conversion table:

Anchovy essence

Anchovy paste

Bannock

Flat, round cake

Bicarbonate of soda

Baking soda

Biscuits

Cookies or Crackers

Boiling fowl

Stewing fowl

Broad beans

Windsor or fava

Cake mixture

Cake batter

Caster sugar

Granulated sugar

Cornflour

Cornstarch

Cream, single or double

Light or heavy (whipping) cream

Desiccated coconut

Flaked coconut

Dripping

Meat dripping

Essence

Extract

Flaked almonds

Slivered almonds

Haricot beans

Navy beans

Hough

Shank of beef

Icing

Frosting

Jam

Preserves

Jelly (sweet)

Jello

Rasher

Slice

Roast potatoes

Oven-browned potatoes

Scone

Shortcake, biscuit

Single cream

Light cream

Soft brown sugar

Light brown sugar

Spring onion

Green onion

Stewing steak

Braising beef

Sultanas

Seedless white, or golden, raisins

British

American

Cooking equipment:

Ashet (Scottish)

Meat dish

Baking sheet or tray

Cookie sheet

Frying pan

Skillet

Girdle

Griddle

Greaseproof paper

Waxed paper

Large pot

Dutch Oven or deep cooking utensil with a tight-fitting lid

Liquidiser

Electric blender

Roasting tin

Roasting pan with rack

Sandwich tins

Round-layer cake pans

Stew pan or pan

Kettle

Quantities produced by the recipes: servings per person

While this can only be an approximation since much depends on serving size and on the position in the meal, not to mention individual appetites, these are recommended average portion sizes per person of certain ingredients.

Soup: 250-300 ml/9-10 fl oz (larger amount if to be served as a main meal broth)

Meat and Fish uncooked weight: 125-175 g/4½-6 oz (without bones) 200-225 g/7-8 oz (with bones)

Rice and Pasta: 75 g/3 oz dry weight

Potatoes in their skins uncooked: 150-175 g/5-6 oz (less if served with several other root vegetables)

Oven Temperatures

The temperature in every oven will vary a little whether it’s gas, electric, convection, fan-assisted or Aga.

In an electric, non-fan-assisted oven, the hottest part is at the top and the coolest at the bottom. In this oven, keep baking tins in the middle of the shelf, away from the side to prevent burning. If the heat is coming from the back it’s a good idea to turn baking trays half way through the cooking.

In an electric, convection, fan-assisted oven the heat is circulated more evenly, making the whole oven hotter though this depends on how full the oven is and the size of the baking tins or dishes used which may impede the circulation if they are large. In theory this means that convection ovens can operate at a lower temperature than a standard conventional oven and cook food faster. The hot air circulation tends to eliminate ‘hot spots’ so the food should bake more evenly. The following temperatures for fan-assisted ovens may vary according to the type of oven and the volume of food being cooked. Consult the manufacturers’ handbook for their recommendations.

1: OATS

Oatmeal with milk, which they cook in different ways, is their constant food, three times a day, throughout the year, Sundays and holidays included . . .

J. Donaldson, A General View of the Agriculture of the Carse of Gowrie, 1794.

Original and frequent use of oatmeal was a mark of Scottish nationality to the extent that the English lexicographer, Dr Samuel Johnson, described the ‘Scots’ in his dictionary as ‘oats eaters’. His knowledge of Scottish eating habits came from his travels in Scotland with his Scottish friend James Boswell in the late 1700s. He was an opinionated and often rude visitor, quite capable of making his hosts feel inferior when the fare was not to his taste. Too many bowls of Scots porridge, perhaps, prompted him to define ‘Oats’ as ‘a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people’.

Yet the Scots appear to have survived very well on oats and even been quite healthy, if travellers’ tales are to be believed. Thomas Pennant, one of the most eminent naturalists of the eighteenth century, made a tour of Scotland not long after Dr Johnson and described the men as ‘thin but strong’. Travelling people, like the drovers who herded the cattle around the country, seem to have subsisted almost totally on oatmeal carried in ‘great wallets’ hung round their ‘broad and sturdy backs’. They mixed the oatmeal with water and baked cakes on stones heated by the fire, while soldiers carried a ‘flat plate’ strapped to their saddle for the same purpose. A legendary figure is the ascetic university student from a humble croft, living a subsistence existence on the bag of oatmeal brought from home at the beginning, and middle, of the term.

It is not known where or when cultivated oats originated. Wild oats are said to have been cultivated before 1000 BC by Bronze Age cave-dwellers in Switzerland. The carbonised grains of both wild and cultivated oats, along with wheat and barley, were found at digs along the Forth and Clyde Canal and at Camphill in Glasgow, and have been dated to a hundred or so years BC. Specimens are kept at the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Oats originally came from warmer countries in the east, from south-east Europe, central or western Asia or North Africa, and were certainly cultivated on the European continent before they arrived in Britain. But in the cool, moist Scottish climate, the oat kernels grow slower and therefore fill out better than in warm climates, where the growth is faster. Even oat kernels grown in the south of England are not as well filled as those in Scotland.

Oat flavour depends on many factors. The variety is important; the district where it is grown; the kind of soil; the manuring; the time of cutting the crop; and how the grain is threshed, dried and milled. Varieties of oats are continually changing and have a relatively short life compared with some of the varieties grown in the past. Around 1900, an old variety of oats known as Sandwich was favoured for its well-flavoured oatmeal. This was due to a high oil and protein content compared with the oats which are grown today – the higher the oil content the better the flavour. Oats today contain around 5-7% oil compared with only 1-2% in other cereals. Oats not only have fat in the ‘germ’ but also in the ‘endosperm’.

From a practical storing and cooking point of view the amount of moisture is important. Most samples of newly milled meal have 6-8% moisture. At this level the meal lacks flavour and is why certain recipes say, ‘Toast the oatmeal lightly in the oven before use’, which will concentrate the nutty flavour. Similarly, oatcakes lightly toasted to ‘harden off’ will have a better flavour – the slower the process, the better the flavour. If they are dried too quickly the flavour can be harsh and fiery. This also applies to oatmeal dried in the oven before use.

Since it can become damp from exposure to the air, oatmeal should be stored well-pressed down in an airtight container. It was traditionally stored in a ‘girnal’ (wooden chest) – the freshly milled oatmeal tramped down, usually by children, so it would ‘stay fresh’ till the new harvest.

In all native oatmeal dishes such as porridge, oatcakes, brose and skirlie it’s the good flavour of the meal which gives them their special character. Freshly milled meal will always produce the best flavour. If stored for too long it can develop a bitter taste or ‘nip’. This is caused by ‘lipase’ enzymes which break down the fat into a bitter, unpleasant-tasting, fatty acid.

Traditional Milling

First the grain is dried out or ‘conditioned’ to a moisture content of around 15%. It’s then kiln-dried: spread out on the kiln floor, which consists of perforated metal sheets with a smokeless-fuel-fired furnace some 20-30 feet below. The oats are turned by hand with large shovels until the moisture content is reduced to around 4-5%, when the meal will have taken on its mild, nutty flavour. The milling begins with shelling the husks, then the grains are ground between stone mill-wheels to the required ‘cuts’ or grades.

There are four water-powered, stone-ground mills and several factory mills where kiln-drying and stone-grinding is the method used.

Oatmeal ‘Cuts’ or Grades

Pinhead – used for haggis, oatmeal loaves.

Rough – used for porridge or brose, sometimes rough oatcakes.

Medium/Rough – used by butchers for mealie puddings.

Medium/Fine – porridge, brose, skirlie, baking.

Super-fine – used in baking and in oatcakes along with a coarser grade.

To make Pinhead oatmeal the whole kernel is cut in half with any floury meal sifted out. Medium/Rough is also known as Coarse Medium. Medium and Fine grades are the most popular. There is also Oat flour which is distinct from Super-fine which still has a granule.

Other Oat Products

Rolled oats were developed in America by the Quaker Oat Company in 1877, and are made by steaming and rolling pinhead oatmeal. While they have the obvious advantage of cooking more quickly than regular meal, they have been specially heat-treated with some loss of flavour and nutrients, and this also applies to all the other ‘instant’ oat porridges now on the market. Jumbo Oatflakes are made by steaming and rolling the whole groat.

Dietetic Value

It has taken an American professor, James Anderson of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, to endorse the wisdom of generations of Scots ‘oats eaters’. Namely, that oats contain a gummy fibrous material (evident when porridge is made) which reduces blood cholesterol, blood sugar and fats. Researching the problems of diabetics, he discovered that oat bran is particularly rich in this ‘water-soluble’ fibre, much more so than wheat bran, which contains an ‘unsoluble’ cellulose and very little of the gum. Oats also score on value for money, since compared with other grains they contain more protein, more fat, more iron, more of the B vitamins, more calcium and also slightly more calories.

Barley

Despite the fact that today barley is mainly malted and used for distilling whisky, it was the chief crop in Scotland for all purposes from Neolithic times until the introduction of oats in the Roman period. From this time onwards the oat crop developed, but it was not until the 1700s that oatmeal became the main food crop and barley was more often used to distil whisky. Despite this, whole grains of barley continued to be used to thicken broths – as they still are today – and its milled flour was still used in bannocks. In the Highlands and Islands, and among the lower classes in the Lowlands, barley flour remained the preferred choice for making bannocks. As it still is today in parts of the Hebrides, the north of Scotland and in Orkney and Shetland.

The old Neolithic variety grown in Scotland since ancient times is known as ‘bigg’ or ‘big’ (hordeum vulgare) and makes a dark greyish-brown bannock. Barley from ‘bigg’ is called ‘bere’ (pronounced ‘bare’). There is no sweetening in the beremeal bannock, which allows the natural flavour of the meal to predominate. It has a more distinctive flavour than oatmeal with a slightly astringent ‘earthy’ tang which combines well with creamy Orkney Farmhouse cheeses. Bere is ground and made into beremeal bannocks by the local bakers. Stoneground Orkney beremeal is sold in Orkney and also in many specialist shops, as well as butchers’ shops and small village shops in rural areas in the rest of the country. It is mostly stone-ground at water-powered mills: the Barony Mill in Birsay on Orkney and the Golspie Mill in Sutherland.

Pearl barley, which is used for thickening Scotch Broth, is widely available, while barley flour from pearl barley is less common but available in specialist shops. Like oatmeal, barley and barley flour/beremeal should both be bought in small quantities and stored in an airtight container. The flavour of barley flour is not as strong as beremeal.

Peasemeal

Roasted milled peas are used to make this very fine flour, much loved for making brose (see here). Yellow field peas are first roasted, which caramelises some of the sugar and darkens the colour. They are then ground through three pairs of water-powered millstones, becoming successively finer with each grinding. Peasemeal was used in a mix with other meals in bannocks and scones adding extra protein food value. It is ground at the Golspie Mill in Sutherland (see here).

Wheat

While the rest of the country grew mostly oats and barley, wheat flourished in the more fertile lowland areas of south-east Scotland, the Laigh of Moray, parts of Fife and Easter Ross. These areas were all developed by monastic farmers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries who grew wheat mainly as a cash crop. Not much appears to have been eaten by the common people, except at feasts and festivals. Higher up the social ladder, fine wheat bread was initially something of a prestige food which made its social descent gradually till sometime in the early 1900s, when it became a staple item of the Scottish diet.

Oatcakes

Hear, Land o’ Cakes, and brither Scots . . .

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

Burns meant, of course, land of oatcakes, and not the sweet-flavoured cakes that have long been associated with the word. But why should the oatcake have come about, and why wasn’t it just called oat bread or oat biscuit? It’s an etymological puzzle which starts with unravelling the original meanings of loaf, bread, cake and biscuit.

Loaf, Bread, Cake and Biscuit

‘Loaf’ is simple – it has always meant the undivided item. ‘Bread’ is more complicated, since it originally meant only a ‘piece’ or ‘bit’, later referred to as ‘broken bread’. The term ‘a loaf of bread’ really meant a loaf of ‘pieces’. Eventually ‘bread’ became known as the undivided item. The Lowland Scots and the Northern English have retained the original meaning of ‘piece’ when they say ‘Gie’s a piece’ – meaning a piece of bread.

When bread, meaning the undivided item, was baked not in a soft yeast-risen form but in an unleavened flat, round shape, it was known as a ‘cake of bread’. It was usually baked hard on both sides by being turned in the process. We still talk of something being ‘caked’ hard. A ‘cake’ of soap gets its name from this too. In Wales, the North of England and Scotland (all oat-growing areas) this meaning survives in the oatcake.

‘Biscuit’, though it was also a round, flat, unleavened item, is derived from the meaning ‘baked twice’. This was so it would keep twice as long, often to feed armies or sailors. In the mid-1500s it was described thus: ‘The bread was such as was provided to serue [sic] at need, or in Wars, for it was BISCUIT, this is twice baked and without leaven or salt’. Sailors ate ‘sea biscuit’.

Scots Oatcakes – shape and flavour

In their most basic and primitive form, Scots oatcakes are made with ground oatmeal, salt, a little dripping and water to mix. The Hebridean oatcake (Bonnach Imeach) is usually made with fairly fine oatmeal and is rolled out to between a quarter and half-an-inch thick, making it a fairly substantial cake. The Highlanders prefer a thinner, crisper variety, usually rolled out to less than a quarter-of-an-inch thick and made with medium oatmeal. Lowlanders often add some wheaten flour, which makes the texture less brittle, but they may also prefer a coarser oatmeal (pinhead) mixed with medium oatmeal, which makes an oatcake with a good bite to it. The taste in the North-East is also for a rough oatcake. The heavier Hebridean variety is the exception to the general preference throughout the country for a crisp, crunchy cake, which means it must be rolled out as thinly as possible.

Not many writers in the past mention the thickness of oatcakes, but in his diary, Our Journal into Scotland (1629), C. Lowther says that, ‘Three travellers in the Borders had oat bread cakes, baked a fifth of an inch thick on a griddle . . .’ At the other extreme there was the old festive ‘mill bannock’ which was made twelve inches round and one inch thick, with a hole in the middle to simulate the mill wheel.

The usual shape is a round bannock cut with a cross into four. Size depends on the size of the girdle. In pagan times, the Greeks and Romans cut crosses on their buns to represent the four seasons. Today the custom is continued with a different symbolism when crosses are put on hot cross buns.

A three-cornered piece of oatcake, scone or shortbread, the fourth part of a bannock, is known as a ‘farl’. Old-fashioned, girdle-baked oatcake ‘farls’ are not sold commercially today since they curl up at the edges and break easily. Most commercial oatcakes are flat oven-baked and sold in packets.

The fat which is used will affect the flavour of the oatcake. Bacon fat gave a special flavour, though other fats from beef and lamb were also used. Dripping of any kind is better from the point of view of making a ‘shorter’ textured cake. Butter and cream will add flavour too.

Oatcakes in the diet

For Breakfast . . . the cheese was set out as before, with plenty of butter and barley cakes, and fresh baked oaten cakes, which no doubt were made for us: they were kneaded with cream and were excellent.

Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, 1803.

‘Oatcakes are especially good with herrings, sardines, cheese, curds, buttermilk, broth, and kail; or spread with butter and marmalade to complete the breakfast,’ says F. Marian McNeill (The Scots Kitchen, 1929). The delicate, mealy flavour goes well with unsalted butter and some crowdie (the traditional Scottish version of cottage cheese) mixed with a little cream, the soft-cheese texture complementing the crunchy cake. All traditional soft cheeses are good with oatcakes (see here). The strong aromas and distinctive tang of heather honey make another good partner for an oatcake.

Records of meals show that oatcakes were commonly eaten at breakfast, dinner and supper as well as with tea at four o’clock in the afternoon. ‘Oatcakes with milk’ appears frequently in the diet charts of farm workers. In his Description of Scotland, in 1629, G. Buchanan says: ‘They make a kind of bread, not unpleasant to the taste, of oats and barley, the only grain cultivated in these regions, and, from long practice, they have attained considerable skill in moulding the cakes. Of this they eat a little in the morning, and then contentedly go out a-hunting, or engage in some other occupation, frequently remaining without any other food till evening.’ Highland crofters who went up into the mountains with their flocks during the summer months and stayed in primitive ‘sheelins’ or ‘bothies’, made butter and cheese with cows’ and sheep’s milk which they ate with oatcake, according to Thomas Pennant writing in 1772.

Burns says that they ‘are a delicate relish when eaten with warm ale’. Whether this means that amongst the very poorest classes they were regarded as a luxury is not clear, but in the poorhouse diets oatcakes are never mentioned. Porridge or brose with milk, more quickly and easily made than oatcakes, were their basic fare.

GIRDLE OATCAKES curled

Quantity for one girdle:

125 g/4½ oz medium and fine oatmeal (about half-and-half or all medium oatmeal)

1 tablespoon dripping, lard or butter, melted or cream

Large pinch of salt

2 tablespoons boiling water

Coarse oatmeal for rolling out

These attractive, curled triangles have a crisp, ‘short’ bite to them. They can be cut into 4, 6 or 8 depending on when they are to be eaten, the largest size usually served at breakfast.

Mix and roll out only enough for one girdleful at a time. Making up large quantities means that the mixture cools, making it difficult to roll.

Mixing and shaping

Mix the meals and salt. Add the fat or cream and mix through the meal. Make a well and add two tablespoons boiling water. Stir in, then knead to make it come together into a soft, firm ball. Add more water if necessary. The less water used the crisper the oatcake. Knead into a round. Dust the work surface with some coarse oatmeal and roll out to a circle about 3 mm/one-fifth inch thick. Keep bringing together round the edges to keep it from cracking. Cut with a cross into four or into six or eight. Leave to dry for about half an hour before cooking – this is not essential, but it helps to make the oatcakes curl.

Heating the girdle

(A large, heavy-based frying-pan will do instead.)

Heat the girdle slowly to get an even heat. It should be moderately hot for oatcakes, and the best way to test is by holding your hand about 2.5 cm/1 in from the surface. It should feel hot, but not fiercely so. A steady, slow heat is needed for drying out oatcakes.

Firing

Put the oatcakes on the girdle and leave till they have curled – they will curl upwards. If the cakes are too thick, they will not curl. Turn down the heat and leave for another five minutes till thoroughly dried out. This was originally done on a special toaster in front of the fire. Like toast, they should be put upright to cool since they continue to lose moisture till cold. Put in a toasting rack in a warm place to dry out thoroughly.

Note: Sometimes oatcakes were simply ‘toasted very slowly at a distance from the fire, first on one side and then on the other on a toaster with open bars to let the moisture escape.’ Meg Dods (1826).

Storing

Keep in an airtight tin or buried in oatmeal, which gives them a nice mealy taste. If they have been kept for more than a week it is a good idea to dry them off slightly in the oven or in front of the fire to improve the flavour.

Serving

They can be served slightly warm but not so hot that they make the butter run.

OVEN OATCAKES very thin

350 g/12 oz medium oatmeal

50 g/2 oz coarse oatmeal

50 g/2 oz spelt or plain white flour

1 tsp honey, optional

50 g/2 oz butter

75 ml/3 fl oz boiling water to mix

Extra oatmeal for rolling out – fine, medium, coarse or pinhead

These are rich, short oatcakes which were eaten on festive occasions. They are made very thin by rolling out on a sheet of foil which is then easily lifted onto the baking tin.

To make

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C/160Cfan/Gas 4.

Use a 23 x 33 cm /9 x 13 in baking tin.

Put the meals and flour into a bowl. Mix thoroughly. Put the butter into a pan and melt with the water. When almost boiling, add to the meal with the honey and mix to a stiffish dough. It should come together easily. If it is too crumbly, add a teaspoonful of boiling water. The less water that is added, the shorter the oatcake, but too little will make an oatcake which breaks easily.

Cut a piece of foil a little bigger than the size of the baking tin and dust with coarse, medium or fine oatmeal. Dust a rolling pin with flour and roll out the mixture. For an extra crunchy texture sprinkle some pinhead oatmeal over and press in with the rolling pin. Lift, on the foil, into the baking tin. Cut into required shapes. Bake slowly without browning for 30-40 minutes till crisp.

PORRIDGE

I took my porridge i’ the morning an’ often got naething again till night, because I couldna afford it.

W. Anderson, The Poor of Edinburgh, 1867.

Goldilocks stole her porridge in the morning, soldiers marched on their morning porridge, and the Scottish peasant for many centuries started the day with a bowl of this sustaining food.

Porridge-making is a morning ritual: the handfuls of oatmeal running through the fingers of one hand into a large, iron pot filled with boiling water, while the other hand stirs with the long, tapered stick (spurtle); then the pot left at the side of the fire giving the familiar ‘plot’ every few minutes just to show it is still cooking.

It’s true that it was also eaten for supper, and that leftovers were poured into the ‘porridge drawer’ in the Scotch dresser. The cold porridge set like a jelly and slices were cut off, known as ‘caulders’ (Italians do this with their left-over polenta). These were taken to the fields and eaten in the middle of the day, or slices were fried and eaten at night with eggs, fish or bacon.

Type of meal

Porridge can be made with any kind of oatmeal. Finished texture and consistency is a matter of taste. Ground oatmeal will take longer to cook than rolled or jumbo oats. Pinhead and coarse oatmeal will cook faster if soaked overnight. Fine oatmeal makes a smooth, custard-textured porridge which is often given to babies.

Many ways of cooking but only one way of eating

Wooden bowls (china or earthenware plates lose heat too quickly) were filled from the central pot, often placed in the centre of the table, and the porridge was eaten with a horn spoon. The spoon was dipped into the hot porridge, leaving enough room for the milk or cream on the spoon.

A traditional hand-carved horn porridge spoon is quite large, round and deep, at least the size of a large tablespoon. To eat: the milk or cream bowl or cup is placed beside the larger one and the spoonful of hot porridge is dipped into the cold milk/cream before eating. This way the porridge remains hot which it does not when the milk/cream is added to the porridge. The essence of porridge eating is hot porridge, cold milk/cream.

Flavourings

There is nothing sacred about flavouring it only with salt. Robert Louis Stevenson made maps with golden syrup on top of his porridge as a child. Honey is another favourite. The sharp, bitter flavour of molasses (unsweetened treacle) is good with porridge. Farm workers in the north-east liked to eat their porridge flavoured with some of the molasses which had been bought in drums to feed the horses. Fresh soft fruits such as raspberries or strawberries can be stirred through, or served on top. Nuts, seeds, raisins, prunes, dates will all add texture and character to porridge. Some melted chocolate or a chocolate spread is another option. Whisky mixed with a spoonful of honey will provide a warming glow, as will a spoonful or two of Atholl Brose, see here.

TO MAKE PORRIDGE

4 servings

Put about 1.1 L/2 pt water into a pot and bring to the boil. It does reduce as it cooks, so it is very much a case of how thick you like it: use less water to oatmeal to make a thicker porridge. Sprinkle in 125 g/4½ oz oatmeal/rolled or jumbo oats with one hand, while stirring with a spurtle (long wooden stick) to prevent lumps forming. Lower the heat and leave to simmer for anything up to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Season with a pinch of salt and serve in bowls with a smaller bowl of milk, cream, buttermilk or yogurt.

BROSE

In these barracks the food is of the plainest and coarsest description: oatmeal forms its staple, with milk, when milk can be had, which is not always; and as the men have to cook by turns, with only half an hour or so given them in which to light a fire, and prepare the meal for a dozen or twenty associates, the cooking is invariably an exceedingly rough and simple affair. I have known mason-parties engaged in the central Highlands in building bridges, not unfrequently reduced by a tract of wet weather, that soaked their only fuel the turf and rendered it incombustible, to the extremity of eating their oatmeal raw, and merely moistened by a little water, scooped by the hand from a neighbouring brook.

Hugh Miller, My Schools and Schoolmasters, 1854.

Brose is uncooked porridge. Sometimes, as Miller recalls, it is made with cold water, but preferably with boiling. Single men living in bothies made brose in the morning: country people working in the fields or shepherds in the hills made al fresco brose by the side of a burn. It was the quickest, cheapest way of making a meal. It was the meal which a Zurich doctor saw a shepherd making in the Swiss mountains and decided to give to his patients. ‘Muesli’ (from German meaning ‘mashed dish’) was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1933 (see A Swiss/Scots Breakfasthere).

In rural areas day began at daybreak, about five o’clock, with perhaps a bowl of brose, then four or five hours later, workers would return for breakfast. Dinner was in the middle of the day, supper at night.

For brose, meal was put into a bowl – oatmeal, barley or pease meal – and boiling water, hot milk or the liquid from cooking vegetables or meat was poured over. Often a piece of butter was mixed in and perhaps some dried fruit. This was frequently a supper first course, with the meat and vegetables to follow.

OATMEAL BROSE for breakfast

Put a handful of medium oatmeal or rolled oats into a bowl and pour over 1 cup of boiling milk to cover the oatmeal, add a small piece of butter and stir while pouring. Season to taste with salt.

PEASE BROSE as eaten in the bothy

This is made in the same way as oatmeal brose, but instead fine peasemeal is used which gives it a richer flavour. Lots of currants and butter can be added as well as honey or sugar for sweetening.

ATHOLL BROSE to defeat enemies

170 g/6 oz medium oatmeal

4 tablespoons heather honey

850 ml/1½ pt whisky

425 ml/¾ pt water

It was common to mix whisky with honey in the past and equally common to mix liquid with oatmeal. Bringing the two together in this potent concoction is credited to a Duke of Atholl during a Highland rebellion in 1475. He is said to have filled a well, which his enemies normally drank from, with this ambrosial mixture and they became so intoxicated that they were easily taken by his men.

Some old recipes leave in the oatmeal. But the following is reputed to have come from a Duke of Atholl and uses only the strained liquid from steeping the oatmeal in water.

To make

Put the oatmeal into a bowl and add the water. Leave for about an hour. Put into a fine sieve and press all the liquid through. (Use the remaining oatmeal for putting into bread or making porridge – see here). Add honey to the sieved liquid and mix well. Pour into a large bottle and fill up with the whisky. Shake well before use.

Uses

May be drunk as a liqueur; is often served at festive celebrations such as New Year, or may be mixed with stiffly whipped cream and served with shortbread as a sweet.

BUTTERED OATS BROSE with seeds, nuts, chocolate and dried fruits

250 g/9 oz each of:

buttered oats (see here)

sunflower seeds

pumpkin seeds

mixed nuts

raisins, prunes or dates

dark chocolate cut into chunks

Mix ingredients and store in an airtight container.

To make