SC - Scottish Recipes

[Philip W. Troy]

Sue Wensel wrote:

> I just cooked the feast for our Ceilidh, and we just did a Scottish event last
> fall.
> 
> Finding cookbooks for Scottish recipes isn't difficult; finding period
> Scottish recipes is.  We settled for beef, chicken, and cheese pies -- the
> recipes for the beef and chicken were from Markham (fairly simple fare) and
> the cheese recipe was given to me by the hostess.

I had the same problem about a month ago. I'd been asked to produce a
"generic Celtic feast" of around 20 dishes. Probably three or four of
them were documentably period from any Celtic land. Actually, I was
pretty pleased to have gottten that much!

> The most difficult thing about a quintessentially Scottish feast is the amount
> of baking soda called for in everything we think is Scottish.  Unfortunately,
> to the best of my knowledge, baking soda and baking powder aren't period
> (please, somebody tell me I'm wrong!!)

Interestingly enough, I have read that the standard period substitute
for baking soda was generally: nothing. The theory goes that most baked
goods contained some kind of fat for shortening, and the farmwives, or
whoever did the baking, had very "light" hands. The trick was to work a
dough JUST enough to get it to hold together, and no more. So no excess
gluten development. In addition, most European bakers in period used a
softer wheat flour than we are used to - both because of the extent to
which the meal was processed, but also because of the variety of wheat
used. So, breads were probably considerably heavier than we are used to,
but not as tough as we might expect them to be under the circumstances.

Almost as interesting is the fact that the Romans used what we now call
washing soda for cooking, but not for baking. 

Adamantius