- Paperback: 259 pages
- Publisher: Mercat Press; New Ed edition (25 Oct 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841830704
- ISBN-13: 978-1841830704
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 582,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
'The best book ever written about Scottish food.' Derek Cooper 'A culinary classic.' People's Friend 'Every Scottish household should have a well-thumbed copy tucked in the kitchen shelf.' The Scotsman 'The Scots Kitchen is so much more than a cookery book, splendid though the recipes for food and drinks are. It is a book extolling the whole lore and craft of cooking, social habits and customs of this country. It is a joy...' Evening News '... old school cookery at its best. A classic.' Scotland Magazine
The Scotsman
‘Every Scottish household should have a well-thumbed copy tucked in the kitchen shelf.’
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Marian McNeill explores the varieties of cooking available in Scotland. She leaves out some of the more common recipes, to be found in more generalist cookbooks, and recognises, also, that many 'traditional' Scottish dishes have their counterparts in other parts of the British Isles (and, indeed, Europe). She concentrates, therefore, on the self-evidently 'national' dishes and the ones most likely to be forgotten "in this age of standardization" (she was writing in 1929)!
The traditional dishes have come under more sustained attack since then - supermarkets, fast food outlets, the demise of home cooking, and the glitzy, glamorous images presented by the magazine and television chefs who extol more exotic fare than fresh baked scones or fresh caught fish.
And yet the traditional recipes have been making a major comeback as many are recognising that the old farm cooking offered nutritious, environmentally sustainable, delicious meals - many Scottish restaurants and cafés now boast their home cooking and their variations on a theme ... from venison and salmon to bridies, clapshot, cullen skink, rumbledethumps, and scores of other adventures in taste and texture.
McNeil. here, describes how to make haggis - foregoing any temptation to begin with, 'first capture your haggis, skin and gut it'. She evokes an image of the old farmhouse, the farmer's wife with her sleeves rolled up, scones on the grill, broth on the range, educated fingers at work on fish or fowl. It's an evocation of an era, it's an invitation to nostalgia - I can still taste my mother's soda scones, her tripe and onions, her cloutie dumplings.
McNeill provides a reminder that cooking is a vital constituent to any society - it binds the individual in health, it provides an umbilical connection to family and culture. The big festival meals - Christmas, Thanks Giving in the States - might stick in your memory as events, but it's the breakfasts, the scones, the soups, the mince and tatties whose tastes remain with you always. Fast food comes nowhere close to the pleasures of a regular home made meal - I like to think my children will remember my cooking (and, with enough therapy, learn to forget their mother's).
Marian McNeill reminds you that simple, home-made, 'peasant' cookery is a skills which you should learn for yourself and pass on to your own children, both as a practical skill and as a warm, enduring memory. The Scottish diet became synonymous with heart disease and clogged arteries during the second half of the 20th century as much of the population succumbed to fatty foods. McNeill reminds us that Scotland has a rich larder of grain, meat, fish, fowl, vegetables and fruits, and that these can provide the basis of a very healthy diet.
Cookery, here, is a tactile art form, a sensual pleasure. Traditional cookery is fast food - many of the recipes take but minutes to prepare, many, like the ubiquitous cauldron of Scots broth you always found in Scottish homes, are designed to last days at a time, to be reheated as and when necessary. It's time to rediscover the therapeutic, stress-relieving nature of kneading dough or stirring a pan of broth! A fine little book which has lost none of its value through its age.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Very good image of days before 'junk' and comfort foods. My wife, who is the chef at our small West Highland restaurant, loves this book and her only criticism would be the print size.
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