With Burn’s Night once more upon us I should like to add some recipes from the archive that are not just Haggis, Neeps and Tatties.

Recorded in the fifties, these recipes represent a large element of tradition including the standard Cock-a-Leekie soup and also the lesser known hare soup!

Robert Burns was more than just a farmer, he was also a poet, Scotlands poet.

His roots were in the deep soil of the north and his poetry reflects the life and times he knew, and the women he loved,

‘O, my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.
O, my luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till ALL the seas gang dry!’

The influence of French cuisine is apparent in the form of quenelles and from Scandinavia in the form of pickled herrings.

The recipes under beverages do not involve the more ‘pedestrian’ tea or coffee but lean more towards the liqueur, such as Athol Brose and Highland Bitters. No wonder then that his prose could wax lyrical with such homily’s as,

To see her is to love her,
and love but her forever,
for nature made her what she is,
and never made another.

and finally, on a more ‘down-beat’ note,

Had we never loved sae kindly
Had we never loved sae blindly
Never met  – or never parted –
We had ne’er be broken hearted