39755: Hebridean Fare

An account of traditional Hebridean cooking by Jessina M Macdonald, Arivruach, published in Dioghlum, Nov 1999

With only basic ingredients and utensils to use on an open peat fire, cooking was therefore mainly plain but also nourishing and appetising. Gradually stoves and solid fuel cookers appeared and dishes became more varied. Having an oven was a great improvement, especially for baking as well as being able to have more than one pot in use at the same time on the top of a stove.

Bread was made on the griddle on the open fire; scones, oatcakes and barley scones. The flour scones in round bannocks or triangles could be varied from plain ones by adding egg to some or currants, mashed potato or treacle and some with half the amount of each of flour and oatmeal. Oatcakes were finished off on an iron stand in front of red embers which made them nice and crunchy with a nutty flavour. Barley scones were varied by using sweet milk, buttermilk, salt, bicarbonate of soda or just butter and hot water, whichever the housewife found satisfactory. Bere-meal was used at one time and can now be bought in health food shops as well as pease meal which had been used in brose and bannocks.

When the daily baking had been done, the girdle was cleaned with sea salt and paper, no one was allowed to put water on it or on the iron frying pan.

Oatmeal was used in many ways other than baking; porridge, brose, gruel, ‘stiurag’, ‘fuarag’ or ‘stapag’, oatmeal and fresh cream (cranachgan); oatmeal stuffing, mealy puddings, haggis, ‘ceann-cropic’ (fish liver and oatmeal seasoned and cooked in the fish head); ‘bonnach-bois’ (a thick oatcake made on the palm of the hand and baked in an upright position before a fire). Oatmeal was used for poultices and many other things, in drinks and on occasion was given to animals.

When sheep were butchered for home requirements, every scrap was used from head to tail. The wool, skin, even the horns were put to use. The lights (liver, heart and kidneys) were cooked first as was the head and feet. Sheep’s head broth made with barley and fresh home-grown vegetables was a treat in itself accompanied by floury tatties. Jellied sheep’s head was made by rendering the stock in which the head was boiled, down to a minimum that would form a jelly, flavoured by onions, turnip, etc and adding the cooked meat before leaving to set.

The mealy and black puddings were made in the sheep’s stomach and other tripe skins. The cattle’s stomach was soaked, scrubbed and washed until pure white and made into a tripe and onion dish with milk added. Wild goose and duck, rabbit, hare and venison were used when in season. Fish of some sort was eaten daily, especially herring. When white fish was available, the roes and "ceann cropic" were enjoyed.

Chicken soup made with fowl reared on the croft, cooked in an iron pot with generous helpings of added rice and vegetables; tattie soup and cock-a-leekie were all tasty, sustaining dishes full of goodness.

Sweet dishes were mainly milk puddings and when stoves were introduced, baked rice pudding was a great favourite, especially when sultanas were added and topped with fresh cream.

Barley water, beef tea, yeast beer and egg flips were given to combat colds and other ailments but as the food and drink were purely unadulterated, people’s immune system was very healthy.