Recipes for a Scottish Feast

The following recipes were served at If It's Not Scottish, It's Crahhhhhpt, October 5, 1996.

Barley Skink

No recipe available; this is a whole-cloth one. Make a good beef stock using beef, bones, carrots, celery, parsley, salt and pepper. Add barley, meat, onions, and spice with salt, pepper, sugar and vinegar to taste. Cook until barley is no longer crunchy.

Savoury Tosted or Melted Cheese
From Sir Kenneth Digby's Closet Unlocked, this version is based on, but not identical to the version in The Miscellany by Cariadoc of the Bow and Elizabeth Dendermonde.

Cut pieces of quick, fat, rich, well tasted cheese, (as the best of Brye Cheshire, &c, or sharp thick Cream-Cheese) into a dish of thick beaten melted Butter, that hath served for Sparages or the like, or pease, or other boiled sallet, or ragour of meat, or gravy of Mutton: and if you will, chop some of the Asparages among it, or slices of Gambon of Bacon, or fresh=callops, or Onions, or Sibboulets, or Anchovis, and set all this to melt upon a Chafing-dish of Coals, and stire all well together, to Incorporate them; and when all is lf an equal consistence, strew some gross White_Pepper on it, and eat it with tosts or crusts of White-bread. You may scorch it at the top with a hot Fire-Shovel.

Makes 1 cup -- appoximately 8 servings 1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup cream cheese
1/4 lb Brie or other strongly flavored cheese (I use farmers)
2 Tbsp whole milk (though not in the original recipe, I find that a bit of milk helps gives this a better consistency, and helps the whole thing hang together better)
1/4 t white pepper

Melt butter. Melt cream cheese in butter. Add milk. Cut up the farmer's cheese and stir it into the mixture over low heat. You may want to use a whisk to blend the two together, though a spoon will do. Unlike the Cariadoc redaction, this one does not tend to separate. When you have a uniform, creamy sauce you are done. Serve over toast, put on toast and broil for 30 seconds-1 minute, mix in (or serve over) things like asparagus, bacon, sauted onions, etc.

Brose

Traditional

1/2 cut steel-cut oat or oat flour
1/2 cup Hot water, whisky, or milk
Honey, sugar, salt, butter, etc, to taste

Place oats in bowl. Add hot liquid, stir. Add flavorings. Eat. The object is to get lumps of oatmeal with gooey outsides and dry insides.

Apple Tartes

Markham and Me

This tart follows the basic process for the strawberry tarts, but substitutes honey for sugar--mostly because I really like the taste of apples cooked in honey.

For each pie, take
3 lbs apples, peeled, cored and quartered.
1 pie shell
Approximately 1/3 of a 1 lb jar of honey, or 2/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves

Preheat oven to 425F. Roll pie shell and place in pan, sprinkle bottom of shell with sugar. Put in a layer of apples (enough to cover), sprinkle on half of the cinnamon and cloves. Pour honey (or sprinkle sugar) over layer (1/4 to 1/2 cup?). Repeat for second layer. Cover, bake for appoximately 45 minutes.

Oat Bannocks/Cakes

insert recipe here

And for dinner we have

Onion Soup

From Mrs McLintock's Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, (18th C), and the Two 15th Century Cookbooks

Take a neck and Hough of Beef, a Nuckie of Veal, boil all the Substance out of the Meat, put in with them 3 or 4 Onions stuck with Cloves and a little black Pepper, Jamaica Pepper, when they are all well bioled, strain the Liquor thro' a Callender, then take two Dozen of larget Onions, boil them in a little of the Broth; when they are well enough, pout off the liquor they were boiled in, put the Onions into a plate and pour the Soup on them.

1 gallon water
1 lb beef
1 beef bone
1 veal bone
10 onions
cloves
salt and pepper
Make your broth with the beef, bones, and 3 or 4 oniones stuck with 6 cloves each, pepper and salt. Strain the liquid and add the other onions, cut into 1/4s. Boil until the onions are done. Serve.

Oat Bannocks and Bread

insert recipe here

Fried Chicken

From The Good Huswife's Jewell

Take yoru chickins and let them boyle in verye good sweete broath a prittye while, and take the chickens out and quarter them out in peeces, and then put them into a Frying pan with sweete butter, and let them stewe in the pan, but you must not let them be browne with frying, and then put out the butter our of the pan, and then take a little sweete broath, adn as much Vergies, and the yolkes of two Egges, and beate them together, and put in a little Nutmegges, synamon and Ginger, and Pepper into the sauce, adn then put them all into the pan to the chickens, and stirre them together in a pan and put them into a dish and serve them up.

2 whole chickens