Traditional Scottish food recipes

[PEEDYC]

The "cloutie" is a muslin cloth which is "scalded" and then covered in flour before the dumpling mixture is placed in it. This gives the pudding a glaze when "cooked" / boiled. The cloutie with the mixture is suspended in a large pan of boiling water but must not rest on the bottom of the pan. It can take as long as four or more hours to cook, but well worth the wait I can assure you.

[Lachlan09]

Don't forget the Atora suet !

My big brother and I used to fight over who got the spicy jellied coating ! That was the best bit !

[MacKay71]

Thanks for the link!!

[Lachlan09]

Anyone know how to make toffee doddles ? (The dark, hard caramelised toffee shapes that used to clump together in the wee paper poke in your school blazer pocket)

[Tobus]

Over the weekend I got a wild hair and made Cock-A-Leekie Soup along with some Clapshot. The soup was so-so... nothing special, really. But I really loved the clapshot recipe. That's the first thing I've ever made that had turnips in it.

On a related note, do you folks find that eating turnips makes everything else taste funny?

[Lachlan09]

Not really.

I think turnips have a distinctive set of flavours according to type, ranging from aromatic to earthy and even dull, swedes being the dullest or potentially most abused flavour. Age and treatment tend to affect the flavour outcome somewhat. Brussel sprouts are another veretable with a Jekyll and Hyde flavour (you can get good or bad, sweet or stinky, even in the same batch). But again, you only eat turnips with certain types of food, so their effect enhances rather than detracts from or spoils the flavour of other food.

My mum and dad used to use different sorts of turnips for different purposes. My favourites were those little white turnips which grew in the early summer, called Snowball, which were plucked out the ground while still young and so tender and juicy, then usually simmered whole, drained and coated in knobs of butter which melted over them. We also had early Milan which were a spring turnip and used for stews and mutton etc soups, Golden Ball, which were good summer eating turnips used either mashed or diced with butter. These were all turnips which grew outside of winter.

Swedes were usually got from the local M&F Co-op, as they were bigger and a bit rougher than the home-grown types and were available during winter (no frozen veg back then). They usually ended up in soups, stews and mashed with haggis. Compared to the other turnips, swedes weren’t as nicely flavoured as the others and you could get a variance in flavour from swede to swede. God only knows what the school used to do with them for school dinners, but they usually tasted vile when a dollop of mashed swedes was dumped on your plate.

The three things that turnips can suffer from, for an end-user/diner, are stringiness, dryness typified by little voids inside the turnip and worms which burrow way inside.

I think Scots used swedes because a) they were cheap, b) they were relatively native and c) they were hardy growers. It is one of those food items which Scots ate but English gave to their animals. (oats being another, as Doctor Johnson once famously declared).

[Lachlan09]

Any good clootie recipes ?

[Jock Scot]

To sweeten your mashed swede which can taste a bit earthy. When boiling the swede add some parsnip, cook together and then mash them together. At a guess, 20 % parsnip, 80% swede is about the right mix.You can add to the mix some carrots too---all cooked together.

[NewEnglander]

I made cockaleekie soup yesterday. It was probably the most thorough use of a chicken I've ever pulled off. The bird simmers in in the water to make the stock and then I added back the dark meat to the soup. The white meat I saved and made into a curried chicken salad for the girl's lunch. The soup was excellent, especially with some homemade bread. I think this will become our go-to soup when someone is feeling a bit under the weather. (full disclosure: i skipped the prunes)

[McFarkus]

Thanks!! I've bookmarked the page