The Scottish Kitchen - Soups

Scotland has always been famous for excellent soups, broses and potages. Some have attributed this excellence in soup making to the early and long connection with France in the ninth century. However, the Scottish housewife has always been thrifty and able to make a little go a long way, without waste. To make a pot of soup out of a little meat, or a bone, and home-grown vegetables, provided nourishing fare to feed a family.

Brose

A simple soup made by cooking various items-or one item in water and thickening it eventually with a handful of oatmeal. Kail or kale brose is probably the most well known. It is a brose, flavoured with the dark green curly cabbage, called curly kale, available in the dead of winter.

Kale Brose

Serves 8. Simmer 1 lb shin of beef, skirt or ox cheek with a cow-heel or marrow bone in 5 pints of water and simmer for 3 hours. Add a good handful of Kale leaves, stripped from their tough stalks, cut into shreds, and leave to cook for 15 mins. Have ready, (toasted in a low oven, and not allowed to brown), a good handful of fine oatmeal. Place this in a bowl, stir in a ladleful of the soup and put the whole thing back in the pot.

Remove the bones and discard, saving any marrow. Cut up the meat and put back. Season, skim off the fat if you like-this was once the luxury of the soup for people whose diets were poor-but today we don't need it, and are better without it.

Nettles, spring onions, leeks can be substituted for kale.

Mussel Brose

Ingredients - serves 6
About 40 mussels
600ml (1 pint) cold water
Seasoning
25g (1 oz) toasted oatmeal
600ml (1 pint) warm milk

Method
1. Wash and scrub the mussels thoroughly, and discard any that are open.

2. Put into a large saucepan with the water, cover and heat until they open.

3. Strain the liquid into a pan, shell and beard the mussels

4. Add the milk to the strained mussel juice, add seasoning to taste, and heat gently.

5. Sprinkle in the toasted oatmeal stirring continuously so that it forms knots

6. Add the mussels, and reheat without boiling.

Cockles can be used in the same way

Barley Broth (Scotch Broth)

Hailed as Scotland's national soup, Scotch broth is the kind of one-pot main course soup, or soup stew, that every country except England seems to have made for centuries under various names (pot-au-feu being a good example). You simply simmered whatever meat, pulses and vegetables you had to hand, and different regions provided different combinations. If you only had a little meat, it was chopped up and served in the soup as a filling main course, and that was your meal. If you could afford a whole chicken, or plenty of cheap mutton or beef, you supped the cooking liquor as soup, followed by a main course of the meat or poultry served with vegetables.

Boswell was surprised to see Dr Johnson enjoying the broth in Edinburgh during a tour of the Highlands in the eighteenth century "You never ate it before?" he asked. Johnson replied "No, but I don't mind how soon I eat it again".

Here is a traditional recipe for this popular national dish.

Ingredients - serves 8
3-6lbs neck of lamb or mutton, ribs or knuckle
2-4 ozs. pearl barley
2-4 ozs. dried white or split peas,
soaked overnight.
2 carrots, scraped and diced
2 white young turnips or swede,
peeled and diced
2-3 onions or 3 small leeks, diced
Salt and pepper
Chopped parsley

Method
1. Put the meat into a deep saucepan with a scant 32 fl ozs of water to each 1lb of meat.

2. Add the barley and peas, bring slowly to the boil and skim until clear. Simmer for 30 minutes if using lamb, and for one hour if using mutton.

3. Add vegetables and simmer till meat is very tender - about a further two hours.

4. When the meat is ready, remove it, skim off any fat, and 'reduce' the broth to obtain a good flavour, by boiling rapidly, uncovered.

5. Either serve the meat after the soup, or remove it from the bones, cut it up neatly, and return to the soup to heat through.

6. Just before serving, add a good tablespoon of chopped parsley.

N.B. If making Scotch broth with beef (brisket, shin, flank, or a mixture of each), you will find that shredded kail and sliced leeks will give a better flavour than carrot and turnip.

Cock-a-Leekie

This is claimed by many to be the other national soup of Scotland. It has been served in Royal Palaces for banquets and in much humbler dwellings in Scotland since the sixteenth century. At home in Scotland there was always a pot of soup on the stove/cooker. Broth was the favourite, especially on cold winter days, although it was popular all year round. This old family recipe lists only the ingredients, quantities of each depending on size of family, or how many days it was intended to last.

Ingredients
A cock or plump fowl, leeks, prunes, Jamaica pepper, salt, beef stock or water

Method
1. Cut off roots and part of the heads of two or three bunches of leeks, and wash very thoroughly.

2. Truss the fowl and place in a large pan with three or four of the leeks, blanched and chopped, and 4 pints good stock.

3. Bring to the boil and cook gently for around two hours or until the fowl is tender. Remove fowl from pan.

4. Remove grease with paper. Add remaining leeks, blanched and cut into one inch (2.54 cms) lengths - these should be split if old and strong. Add pepper to taste.

5. Simmer gently till leeks are tender (soup should be very thick of leeks).

6. Half an hour before serving, add a dozen or so prunes, unbroken. A little minced fowl may be added.

Some prefer to remove the prunes just before serving, but in our home, my father and I were always anxious to see who had the most prunes in their soup bowl.

N.B. If water is used in place of stock, add a clove, a blade of mace, parsley and six peppercorns tied in muslin, but take them out when you remove the fowl.

Cullen Skink

This is a stew-soup from Cullen on the shores of the Moray Firth. There are many versions of this recipe, so I have chosen a traditional cottage recipe which reminds me of the fisherman's cottages overlooking the harbour of this town high on the cliffs. The preferred fish is Finnan-Haddie, but undyed smoked haddock fillets can be used. Personally this was my least favourite soup, but nevertheless when it was put before me there was no choice, so I ate it and said nothing

Ingredients - serves 4
1 large Smoked Finnan-Haddie or
1 kg(2 lbs) smoked haddock fillets
Water to cover
1 onion, peeled and chopped
900ml (one and a half pints) milk
25g (1 oz) butter
Approx. 225g (8 ozs) mashed potato
Salt and pepper

Method
1. Place the haddock in a large pan, skin side down, cover with water, bring to the boil, and simmer 5-8 minutes until the fish is just cooked (Finnan-Haddie will take longer to cook than haddock fillets).

2. Take the fish from the pan, remove skin and bones, and discard.

3. Flake the fish and put it back in the stock with the onion. Add seasoning to taste and simmer for 30 minutes.

4. Strain and reserve the stock and fish.

5. Add milk to the fish stock. Then add enough mashed potato to make your preferred consistency.

6. Add the fish, reheat and taste for seasoning.

7. Add the butter, which will barely melt but will run through the creamy soup.