Scottish desserts and baked stuff

[devlin]

I live in a region of southern Indiana (on the border of Louisville, Kentucky) that is heavily populated with old Scots families. And although I don't know a thing about their traditional foods, I'd like to learn.

Anybody have any particular desserts, cakes, cookies, breads they could share? Or book recommendations?

[aprilmei]

THey make this marvellous stuff called fudge. It's very different from other versions I've tasted - it doesn't contain chocolate. I've never made it but when we were travelling in the Highlands a couple years ago, a woman in a shop very kindly wrote out the recipe for me. It's hellishly rich - it contains (if I remember correctly) condensed milk, butter and sugar. It's served in small squares.

Oops, just remembered that they DID have a chocolate version of fudge but I didn't taste it.

Edited February 21, 2006 by aprilmei (log)

[C. sapidus]

Pistachio shortbread is yummy. The recipe uses lemon zest and semolina flour:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/109498

[Adam Balic]

Some very traditional (some extinct) things are:

Cloutie Dumpling: A light fruit and spice pudding boiled in a clout (the pudding cloth).

Left overs are sometimes fried with bacon for breakfast. There are also variations on this type of pudding.

Scottish/Edinburgh Flan (puff pastry with preserved fruit and frangipane), there are also other old variations on this theme. A more modern pie/flan is 'banoffe pie' which is bananas, cream and carmel and loads of sugar.

There are some traditional baked stuff as well.

Butteries (or Buttery Rowies)- are like a deformed salty croissant (very good).

Forfar Bridie - are flaky pastry folded over a meat and onion filling.

Morning rolls - are small flat rolls (morning rolls), breakfast bacon, black pudding etc is served in when on the go.

Potato scones are a flat griddle bread (most often cut into quarters from a round), these are fried for breakfast.

There are many variations on bannocks and scones, oat cakes and other griddle breads.

In terms of cakes there are many, some interesting ones are:

Dundee cake - a rich fruit cake with almonds det into the top.

Black Bun - is a festive cake served at Hogmanay, it is an extremely rich dried fruit filling enclosed in a crisp pastry casing.

There are many variations on gingerbread/spice biscuits - Edinburgh gingerbread, Fochabers gingerbread, 'Broonie', 'Parlies'.

There are also numerous variations on shortbread and some other biscuits, like Abernethy biscuits which are good.

Due to the Scottish sweet tooth there are any recipes for 'sweeties', including Tablet, which is similar to the fudge described above, but more crisp and sugary then soft.

[jackal10]

As usual Adam has nailed it.

He doesn't mention cold deserts such as cranachan (cream, whiskey, toasted oats. raspberries), sometimes called Athol Brose, nor that modern Scottish desert, fried Mars bars..

For books, I like F Marian MacNeill's Scottish Kitchen.

Comprehensive but of more historic interest is Meg Dodds "The cook and Housewifes Manual" 1826 (Meg Dodds was the innkeeper of Cross Keys Hotel (or Cleikum Inn in Peebles) was built in 1693 as a town mansion by Walter Williamson of Cardrona. Later, this inn had strong associations with Sir Walter Scott, the famous Scottish novelist, and its 18th c. landlady was the original for Scott's portrait of Meg Dodds in his novel "St Ronan's Well".)

Amazon have both availabel second hand (in reproduction).

I'm sure American Scots have different traditions

[Mayhaw Man]

I have a client who has a business that was formed to sell nothing but Scottish Goods. There are some incredibly good products here. Maybe you can get some ideas from her site.

Scottish Gourmet USA

[Adam Balic]

As usual Adam has nailed it.

He doesn't mention cold deserts such as cranachan (cream, whiskey, toasted oats. raspberries), sometimes called Athol Brose, nor that modern Scottish desert, fried Mars bars..

For books, I like F Marian MacNeill's Scottish Kitchen.

Comprehensive but of more historic interest is Meg Dodds "The cook and Housewifes Manual" 1826 (Meg Dodds was the innkeeper of Cross Keys Hotel (or Cleikum Inn in Peebles) was built in 1693 as a town mansion by Walter Williamson of Cardrona. Later, this inn had strong associations with Sir Walter Scott, the famous Scottish novelist, and its 18th c. landlady was the original for Scott's portrait of Meg Dodds in his novel "St Ronan's Well".)

Amazon have both availabel second hand (in reproduction).

I'm sure American Scots have different traditions

←

To be pedantic, 'The Cook's and Housewife's Manual', which was written by Christian Isobel Johnstone (first published in 1826). She chose to do so under a pseudonym of "Meg Dods" who was a minor character from a Walter Scott novel. Johnstone was the wife of Scott's publisher.

It's my favourite cookbook, but the one I would go for is F Marian MacNeill's 'The Scots Kitchen', which is specifically Scottish recipes and lots of folk lore and history also.

Edited February 21, 2006 by Adam Balic (log)

[Sturge]

I'd recommend you get hold of Sue Lawrence's Book of Baking, which is on Amazon for around $20 I think. It's not all Scottish but there are some regional recipes in there and often there's a nice little story attached - she's obviously a proud Scot and a lovely writer too.

Emma

[ludja]

Informative and interesting posts, thanks all.

I live in a region of southern Indiana (on the border of Louisville, Kentucky) that is heavily populated with old Scots families. And although I don't know a thing about their traditional foods, I'd like to learn.

Anybody have any particular desserts, cakes, cookies, breads they could share? Or book recommendations?

←

I'd just add as an aside that for some additional information on the adaptation of Scottish, and also in general, British, baking in the US South, "Biscuits, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie" by Bill Neal may be an interesting book to look at.

I've cooked alot out of the book and have mentioned it many times on egullet, but for this thread I'd point out that in this scholarly work he documents many Southern baking recipes with Scottish and English roots. There is a chapter on "From our British Heritage" which has sub-groupings like Manchets, Cracknels and Southern Baps, Bannocks Crumpets. Rusks and Scones. In general, many of the traditional recipes were "enriched" in various ways sometime after their migration to the South. Often in the recipes he discusses the similarities and differences between the versions of the item in both places and over time.

He does mention one book that was used a source for some of the recipes, "Scottish Cookery" (Andre Deutsch, 1956).

[devlin]

These responses are all completely wonderful and exactly what I'm after. I spent a little time browsing Amazon last night and came across several of the books noted here, wondering whether they might be worth buying, adding them to my shopping cart to go back to later. It seems to me the "Cook and Housewife's Manual" was extremely expensive, even used, but I'll have to go take another look. As usual, it appears I'm going to have an Amazon bill to explain to my husband next month.

I've wondered too how many of the regional, "southern" foods around Louisville might have derived from the Scots, but the books I've picked up here and there around the area haven't gone so far as to talk about the history of the food, a thing I always look for and love in a cookbook and so I've never bought any of them.

Are the fruited cakes worth exploring? Or do they fall into the category of the usual, dread Christmas fruitcake? The "fudge" sounds ghastly, and of course now I'm going to have to see whether I can reproduce it, and I'm hoping I don't like it too much. I made two batches of fudge for Christmas which I finally finished off about a week ago, and it just kept getting better and better by the week, although it was so rich I could only tolerate it in about a one-inch square at a time, and then only every other day, which, of course, is why it lasted as long as it did. It too was heavy on the condensed milk.

Thanks all!

[Pille]

Speaking as an Estonian expat in Edinburgh for the last 7 years:

My favourite books for any kind of Scottish recipes are by Sue Lawrence - nice classical dishes, just a wee bit lighter and more suitable for modern palates.

The fudge is nice, but only in _very_ small quantities, as it's extremely sweet and rich.

My own favourite Scottish dessert is cranachan. It's easy to make and ideal for dinner parties, as it can be made ahead. Cranachan uses whisky, toasted oatmeal, whipped cream and raspberries (Sue Lawrence has a version using mascarpone cheese). See here: http://nami-nami.blogspot.com/2005/07/cook...-cranachan.html - am happy to send you precise quantities, if you wish, but it's pretty much up to you how much oatmeal/whisky/cream you want to use.

[jackal10]

If you search on http://www.Bookfinder.com under "housewife's manual" you will find several reproduction copies at about $25.

However I'm not sure I would start with it as the guide to Scotch cooking.

Be aware that what you are buying is a period book, which is not written like modern cook books, for example it uses the language and spelling of the time, and assumes you know about cooking - measurements and exact times are rarely given. It comes complete with wonderful footnotes about conversations of and obscure references to the characters in the Walter Scott novel.

Its an interesting historic book, with most of the recipes not specifically Scots, but typical of the middle class of the time.

An example:

863. Dutch Pudding or Albany Cake Mix two pounds or rather less of good flour with a pound of butter, melted in half a pint of milk. Add to this the white and yolks of eight eggs seperately well beaten, a half pound of fine sifted sugar, a pound of cleaned currants, and a few chopped almonds. or a little candied orange peel sliced fine. Put to this four spoonfuls of yeast. Cover it up for an hour or two, then bake it for an hour in a wide flattish dish. When cold it eats well as a cake*

The footnote says

*This is the bonne bouche at the substantial rural tea parties of the State of New York. The feast, begun with fried eggs and bacon, ends with buck-wheat cakes and the above preparation.

I wonder if this is an ancestor of cornbread?

Edited February 22, 2006 by jackal10 (log)

[chefcyn]

Here's a site full of recipes from Scotland for Visitors:

scottish recipes

[chefcyn]

THey make this marvellous stuff called fudge. It's very different from other versions I've tasted - it doesn't contain chocolate. I've never made it but when we were travelling in the Highlands a couple years ago, a woman in a shop very kindly wrote out the recipe for me. It's hellishly rich - it contains (if I remember correctly) condensed milk, butter and sugar. It's served in small squares.

Oops, just remembered that they DID  have a chocolate version of fudge but I didn't taste it.

←

Whisky Fudge

Ingredients:

1 Kilo white sugar (2.2 lb)

300 grams butter (10.5 oz)

1 tin Nestles sweet condensed milk

1 tea cup of whisky (5 oz)

2 pints of freshly made, hot, milkless tea

Method

Melt butter in a large saucepan, then add the tea. Add all sugar stir continuously until all the sugar has melted. Stir in the milk and whisky and stir continuously until the correct consistency is reached (about 10 to 15 min.--soft ball stage on a thermometer).

Without a thermometer, to check the consistency keep a cup of cold water handy and add a teaspoon of the mixture to it from time to time until it sets firm in the water

Pour into a large buttered tray and when just barely firm, cut it into bite sized squares.

Edited February 22, 2006 by chefcyn (log)

[ludja]

On a thread regarding dishes to serve at tea, Swisskaese just pointed out a nice website "The Great British Kitchen" that has a section on Scotland here that also includes recipes from some traditional Scottish baked goods.

No Scottish breakfast is complete without its morning roll, a yeasted bap, preferably warm from the oven, soft and doughy, dusted with a light cover of flour. At midday, many an appetite is satisfied with a simple Scottish lunch of 'pie and a pint'. Bridies, particularly from Forfar are another lunchtime favourite, filling shortcrust pasties stuffed with steak, onions and gravy.

The Scot's love of baked goods, however, is most evident at tea-time and particularly at that favourite meal, high tea. This is the main evening meal, eaten as early as five or six o'clock and consisting of such savouries as fish and chips; sausage, egg and tomato; kippers, Finnan haddock or Smokies; cold meats such as the favourite 'beef ham'; pies or bridies. These are followed by an equally substantial array of Dundee cake, gingerbread, bannocks, Border and other tarts, cream cakes, marzipans, truffles, sponge cakes and that favourite Scottish speciality, shortbread, in all its many guises (petticoat tails, oatmeal shortbread, Ayrshire shortbread, Balmoral shortbread and many others).

Edited February 27, 2006 by ludja (log)