Many of us talk with Rosemary Kaye every week here on the blog, but I didn’t have a good introduction to post last time she wrote for us. Today, she’s written a fascinating piece about the food and related books of Scotland. So, I wanted to share the introduction she gave me.

‘I moved to Scotland over 30 years ago, and have lived both in Edinburgh and Aberdeenshire. Although I was brought up in London, and worked there for some years (variously at London University, London Zoo, a hospital and finally as a lawyer in the Inns of Court) I now consider myself completely Scottish and have every intention of remaining north of the border forever.  My three children were all born here, and only one has defected back down south.  Having requalified in Scots law, I continued as a lawyer in Aberdeen for a while, then became the administrator for  Edinburgh’s Episcopal cathedral. I’ve now given that up and spend most of my time in the Aberdeenshire countryside, reading, writing, walking, and placating my Siamese cat Gracie. It’s a good life. I read in most genres except science fiction and fantasy, and my favourite authors include Barbara Pym, E Nesbit, Maeve Binchy, Ian Rankin, Miss Read, and Elizabeth Jane Howard. ‘

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I do. Thank you, Rosemary!

If you’ve seen the famous 1949 film – or even read the 1947 Book -, you’ll know that uisge beatha or ‘the water of life’ is quite important to many Scots. Compton McKenzie’s novel Whisky Galore was based on a real event, when the SS Politician was grounded off the island of Eriskay in 1941, but he naturally embellished the facts to make the story more fun. So the fictional SS Cabinet Minister runs ashore off the equally fictional island of Todday just when (owing to war rationing) the residents are getting desperate for their daily drams.

The story of how they manage to salvage the ship’s cargo of whisky, evade the English government Customs & Excise men, and still keep their strict observance of the Sabbath, is as popular today as it was 50 years ago; people enjoy its subversive anti-authority plot, and the glimpses it gives of a long-gone way of life (even on the remote islands, time has moved on and the locals are as likely to make their money from Air B & B as crofting these days.)

And it’s not just whisky that Scotland can offer the foody visitor; Scottish cuisine has come a long way from the days of salty porridge, cabbage and turnips (when I first moved to a remote part of the country almost 30 years ago, ‘neeps’, tatties and soup still formed the staple diet in most villages.)  Whilst in general Scots may still, unfortunately, have one of the worst diets in the world, the causes of that are poverty and old habits rather than lack of availability. So today I thought I’d talk about some of the Scottish foods you may, or may not, have heard of. Some of them even feature in books…

Haggis

There are a lot of myths about haggis, some of them invented deliberately to wind up gullible tourists. You may be told that the haggis is a Highland animal, or even that it only has three legs as that makes it easier to run round the sides of Scottish mountains…In fact traditional haggis is a mixture of sheep’s innards, onion, oatmeal and spices, wrapped up in a sheep’s stomach. It needs to be boiled for hours, then it is cut open and the contents are served with – guess what? – those same old neeps and tatties. Nowadays, of course, it’s usually contained in a plastic bag, it can be microwaved instead of all that steamy boiling, and you can even get a vegetarian version, though I tend to feel that misses the point.

Anyway, haggis isn’t bad really, and it is the traditional dish of honour at every Burns Night Supper on 25^th January, when (after the reciting of the Selkirk Grace and a first course of soup) it is piped into the room. Someone will then ‘Address the Haggis’ by reciting Robert Burns’ poem.  It’s very long, and when the lines ‘His knife see rusty labour dicht/An’ cut you up wi’ ready slicht’ are reached, the host or a guest of honour draws out a knife (originally a dagger) and cuts the haggis from end to end.

There will be a toast – in whisky of course – before everyone tucks in. There are more courses, more speeches, more toasts, and a final Vote of Thanks. The Scots take this extremely seriously and I’ve never seen anyone talk until the recital is over – indeed, a few tears are very often shed, as Scots are a patriotic lot.

Cranachan

Now this Scots dish is much more accessible – it’s a fabulous pudding concocted from raspberries (Tayside and Fife, two counties just north of the Forth, are traditional soft fruit growing areas, which is why so many jam and preserves companies originated there), toasted oatmeal, honey, cream and – guess what? – whisky. Sometimes the dish is assembled by the chef, sometimes the individual ingredients are placed on the table for each person to construct their own. The recipe developed from an older breakfast dish called crowdie, which consisted of a soft curd cheese made from cow’s milk, with oatmeal and honey. Sometimes raspberries were also added. Cranachan was originally served to celebrate the end of the raspberry harvest in midsummer, but now it might appear at Christmas, on Burns Night, or at any special meal. It’s one of my favourite desserts.

Finlay J Macdonald, a native Gaelic speaker born on the Isle of Harris, wrote Crowdie and Cream, a book about his Hebridean childhood in the Hebrides in the inter-war years.  It was a time of great poverty, and this is not avoided, but everyone who’s read the book (I haven’t yet) remarks also on its many hilarious anecdotes about local characters. Macdonald grew up in a new village of eight crofts, land made available to First World War veterans from families who had been evicted in the Clearances. He wrote:

‘even if I were of a mind to do so, I could not hope to catalogue the building of the village stone by stone, because it wasn’t of stones alone that it was built, but of moments, of moods, of happenings that were sometimes long and sometimes short and frequently overlapping; most indefinably of all, it was built on tears and laughter.’

Shortbread

Everyone will have heard of this one!  Sold in every tourist shop from Edinburgh to John O’Groats, shortbread is a rich biscuit made from butter, sugar and flour. You can also add semolina or rice flour. The first written recipe for shortbread is dated 1736 and was recorded by a Mrs McLintock.  

In Scotland shortbread is traditionally served at Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve, which is more important than Christmas north of the border – in fact Christmas Day only became a public holiday here in 1958) but it is of course available all year round. In the past, a specially decorated shortbread cake (‘infar cake’ or ‘dreaming bread’) would be broken over the head of a new bride as she entered her marital home. On Shetland and Orkney this special version would be called ‘the Bride’s Bonn.’

I haven’t found a novel that features shortbread – but I do know of one about Orkney. A book I have on my tottering TBR pile is Amy Liptrot’s hugely acclaimed The Outrun. Liptrot was a 30 year old, highly-paid, fast-living, journalist in London, but her hedonistic lifestyle had resulted in her becoming a serious alcoholic and drug-user. As things got worse and worse, she eventually returned to her childhood home on her parents’ Orkney sheep farm, and this is her memoir of her not-always carefree childhood (her father suffered from serious mental illness), what happened to her in London, her experience of recovery on the island, and the Orcadian wildlife of which she became so aware. The Outrun was chosen as 2016 Non-Fiction Book of the Year by The Guardian. The Independent said:

‘Liptrot has lived her life on the edge of things, literally and metaphorically. Her beautiful book gives a wonderfully evocative account of both, blending searing memoir with sublime nature writing.’

Although I haven’t read The Outrun yet, my friend has and she says it’s exceptional.

Pan Drops

Pan drops are a kind of mint sweet (candy) that have been around in Scotland for at least a hundred years – it’s thought the first ones were made by John Millar & Sons, bakers of Leith, in 1884, and they’re still sold by the Millar company. They’re also known as ‘granny sookers’ – maybe because they’re not as hard as some other mints. Some people even give them as wedding favours. And yes!  They do feature in a book, in fact in a series beloved of Scottish children everywhere.

The late and much-missed Aileen Paterson wrote and illustrated her first Maisie book in 1984.  Maisie Comes To Morningside is the story of an (anthropomorphised) mouse who has been brought up by her Daddy in a remote jungle.  Daddy is an explorer and now needs to go off and explore, so Maisie comes to live with her Granny in Morningside, a very respectable (and now very expensive) upper middle class area of Edinburgh (for those who are familiar with Muriel Spark’s famous novel, Miss Jean Brodie was a resident of the area.) 

Granny lives, as do so many residents of the capital, in a tenement flat.  Her neighbour and best friend Mrs McKitty lives opposite. The two old wifies are extremely respectable, and like nothing better than to have their morning tea together, putting the world to rights and sharing a bag of pan drops.  Granny and Mrs McKitty are absolutely priceless examples of Edinburgh matrons. They take turns to clean the stair (and get very sniffy if someone else misses their turn), they take Maisie out to the Princes Street shops, and in the course of many further books they have adventures in Glasgow, go on a steamer on the Clyde, and even have a trip to New York (Maisie Bites the Big Apple.)

 Aileen Paterson studied art at university, lived in Edinburgh and had six children of her own, so it’s no wonder her books were, and remain, so popular. They’ve even been translated into Gaelic.

Herrings

Although fishing is still a sizeable industry in Scotland, at the beginning of the last century it was a major employer, with whole communities earning their living by the sea. Thousands of boats would follow the fish, and hundreds of fish workers would follow the boats; most were women, trained in the gruelling tasks of gutting and filleting fish. The girls (who started the work at the age of 14) would be moved around the country, from Fraserburgh and Peterhead in North East Scotland, down to Yarmouth in England, and up to Balta Sound in the Shetland Isles.  They would spend many weeks there, living in huts put up for the purpose, and toiling away inside or outside the sheds on very long shifts (in midsummer 18 hour working days were common) until the 1914-18 war put an end to this migration.

Christian Watt Marshall was a daughter of a fishing family; apart from working trips, she spent her entire life in the Fraserburgh fishing community of Broadsea. In the early 1990s  two university researchers arrived at Marshall’s cottage, asking about her memories – the result was A Stranger on the Bars, a wonderful record of a time, and a way of life, long gone.

Deep Fried Mars Bars

My daughter pointed out that I’d forgotten to mention this most famous of modern Scottish ‘delights’. Invented in 1992 at the Carron fish and chip shop in Stonehaven, a coastal town 15 miles south of Aberdeen, the deep fried Mars Bar has achieved iconic status and many imitators. I’ve never tried one myself, and I’m not convinced that one has featured in a novel (though who knows? This is Scotland we’re talking about; a country that’s never met a calorie it didn’t like.)

Lewis Grassic Gibbon (real name James Mitchell), however, grew up in Stonehaven, which forms the northern border of the Mearns, an agricultural area made famous by his most acclaimed work, the trilogy A Scot’s Quair. Especially important is the first instalment, Sunset Song (1932), which in 2005 was voted Scotland’s most popular book.  Sunset Song is the story of a farming family working on the fictitious estate of Kinraddie.  Written in what Gibbon hoped was an accessible (slightly manufactured) form of the Scots language, the book’s themes include the role of women, the hardships of agricultural labour, the effects of World War One, and the coming of new, modern, farming methods and ideas which will displace many people and bring an end to traditional ways of life and customs.

Sunset Song has been adapted for television, and in 2015 was made into a film starring Agyness Deyn as Chris Guthrie, the central character, left to work the land alone after the violent deaths of her parents. (Peter Mullan plays her father.)

There are, of course, many other Scottish specialities. There’s clootie dumpling, a sort of boiled fruit pudding (clootie comes from cloot, the Scots word for cloth, the pudding being boiled in one), black bun (a fruit cake completely wrapped, just in case you were missing those calories, in a thick layer of pastry), and the buttery, fondly known as the’ Aberdeen croissant.’ Except the delicious flaky layers of a croissant are made with delicious French butter; the flat and filling buttery consists largely of lard and salt. In fact the only Scottish food that isn’t bad for you is probably the raspberry – but don’t worry, we add a ton of white sugar to it to make it into jam…

We don’t have that ‘worst diet in Europe’ badge for nothing.

Books mentioned:

Whisky Galore! By Compton McKenzie

Collected Works byRobert Burns (ed. Dr Tim Burke)

Crowdie and Cream by Finlay J MacDonald

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

Maisie Comes to Morningside by Aileen Paterson

A Stranger on the Bars by Christian Watt Marshall

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Disclosure: I bought all of the books of which I have copies.