[Sca-cooks] Scottish Food

[Laureen Hart]

Also look for "1990 Catherine Brown From Broth to Bannocks: Cooking in
Scotland from 1690 to the present day" 
I like it, it has some information from unpublished sources. I tried
Emailing Catherine Brown to see if there was any way to get our collective
hands on the unpublished sources but she didn't reply. Perhaps she will
publish them at some point.

A very valuable resource is "The Scots Gard'ner" by John Reid published in
Edinburgh in 1683.
Not a recipe book but how to garden a huge range of stuff ornamental and
edible.
I have a photocopy of one procured via interlibrary loan. The Calendar
portion is online http://www.cyberscotia.com/ogmios/texts/reid/kalendar.html
Not as useful as the whole manual but still lots of good information. As
mentioned in another post you can extrapolate off of available foodstuffs in
the absence of actual recipes. Not ideal, but better than trying to serve
completely inappropriate stuff.

Lady Castlehill's receipt book: A selection of 18th century Scottish fare :
original recipes from a collection made in 1712 is ok but frustrating, They
didn't include the whole thing and I bet they chose more of the "weird"
receipt than the "normal" ones. (Like Elinor Fettiplace I would prefer the
whole thing rather than an artistic selection).

The 1736 book is Mrs. McLintock's Receipts for cookery and Pastry-Work -
This is an excellent book even though it is out of period.

Scottish Cookery has been a fascination and frustration for me since I
visited Scotland in 1977. There is just so little available to the common
person.

Randell Raye of Crianlarich

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Message: 6
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:05:29 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] scottish recipes
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <4928AC59.4050502 at mac.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

The earliest Scots cookbook is not published until 1736.
The earliest published in England is 1500. That's for starters.
The problem with Scotland is that the culinary sources are few and far 
in between and
there's a lot of nonsense written about what the Scots ate.
Bookwise you might obtain

Brown, Catherine./ Scottish Cookery/. 1985. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 
1999. http://www.foodinscotland.co.uk/books.html 

Geddes, Olive M. /The Laird's Kitchen. Three Hundred Years of Food in 
Scotland./ Edinburgh: HMSO; The National Library of Scotland, 1994.

Peter Brears did an excellent summary of Scottish cookery books in his 
introduction to Elizabeth Cleland's "A New and Easy Method of Cookery" 
from 1755. See http://www.kal69.dial.pipex.com/shop/system/index.html 
for part of 

that introduction and information about the book.


I have an article based on a luncheon that I created for circa 1600
A Luncheon Prepared for TRM Alasdair & Guenievre by Johnnae llyn Lewis
which should be re-appearing at
http://www.mkcc.rhawn.com/MKCC.html   soon.

In connection with a lady from Calontir I also did the notes for an 
early Scots
feast in the time of Malcolm and Margaret. That has a full bibliography 
and was
published in Ars Caidis's issue on the Culinary Arts in November 2005.

You might start with those. And I am sure that Stefan will pop in and 
urge you to
try the Florilegium too. My article on Shortbread for instance appears 
there:
"*Shortbread*" by *Johnnae* llyn Lewis, CE.

Johnnae