SEASONAL SCOTTISH FOOD

Did you know we are heading for the daft days? According to Robert Fergusson’s poem, this is the time around New Year as celebrated in the 18th Century. Catherine Brown, cookery writer, introduced an enthusiastic audience to the tastes enjoyed at that time of year at a talk at the National Library of Scotland.

We're reproducing two of the recipes she recreated for the talk, reducing quantities to manageable amounts.

Het Pint

We may think of mulled wine or gluhwein drinks we have imported from the continent. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was called Het Pint and was sold to revellers in the streets of Edinburgh. There are many recipes for Het (or hot) pint, some including wine, some ale. Mistress Margaret Dod’s recipe from her 1826 is called the Bishop:

The day before this beverage is wanted, grill on a wire-grill, over a clear, slow fire, three smooth-skinned large Seville oranges. Grill them of a pale brown. They may also be done in an oven, or under a furnace. Place them in a small punch bowl that will about hold them and pour over them a full half pint from an old bottle of Bordeaux wine, in which a pounds and a quarter of loaf sugar is dissolved. Cover with a plate. When it is to be served next day (though it may soak for two or three days) cut and squeeze the oranges into a small sieve placed above a jug, containing the remainder of the bottle of wine, previously made very hot. Add more sugar if it wanted. Serve hot in large glasses.

Note for modern cooks: The oranges can be sweet rather than sour Seville oranges, when the amount of sugar will be much less. Sweeten accordingly to taste.

This concoction tastes delicious, you would think that it included spices.

A version using ale rather than wine.

Plumb Broth or Plum Porridge

Mrs Cleland unusually ran a cookery school in Edinburgh in the 1750s. Sir Walter Scot’s mother had a copy of her book (now available in a facsimile edition) and may indeed have attended her school as she lived close by.

One of the recipes included is Plumb Broth or Porridge which is considered by some to be an early version of a Christmas Cake or more likely Christmas pudding or mincemeat:

Take a good hough of beef and a knuckle of veal, put it in the Pot with six Scots Pints (24 imperial pints) of water, boil it on a slow fire, take up the veal before it is too much, but boil the beef to pieces. If the Broth is too stiff, put in a pint of boiling water. Strain the broth before you put in the fruit. Put in the crumbs of two penny loaves, two pounds of currants washed clean, two of raisins stoned and one of prunes. Let all boil til they swell, season it with salt, cloves, mace and nutmeg.

This tastes rather like mincemeat, the texture soft, with little or no meat flavour.

Miss Hooligan's Christmas Cake

Miss Hooligan’s Christmas cake is a ballad about a monstrous cake that poisoned everyone who ate it.

The Daft Days

Read the poet Robert Fergusson’s (who inspired Robert Burns) poem the Daft Days which appeared in a broadsheet about New Year’s Day.

Christmas Cake and Pudding Stories

From the Christmas Archives and from the National Trust

And how Christmas was lost for 400 years in Scotland

Books

Elizabeth Cleland’s New and Easy Method of Cookery 1755

Catherine Brown’s A Year in a Scot’s Kitchen

Katherine Hughes' Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton