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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
A timeless classic and evocation of Scotland, 5 Jun 2005
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.
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