Cloisters

“Atween Yule and Yearsmas
Auld wives shouldna spin;
An’ nae hoose should be waterless
Whare maidens lie within.”
- Old Ryme

In old Scotland, preparation for the ‘Daft Days’ - the days between Yule and Hogmanay - included the baking of a quantity of ceremonial fare and the brewing of Festive Ale. Here are a few of the old recipes for you to restore some of these traditions.

Het Pint (Meg Dods’ recipe)

Grate a nutmeg into two quarts of mild ale and bring it to the point of boiling. Mix a little cold ale with sugar necessary to sweeten this and three eggs well beaten. Gradually mix the hot ale with the eggs, taking care they do not curdle. Put in a half pint of whisky, and bring it once more nearly to the boil and then briskly pour it from one vessel into another ‘til it becomes smooth and bright.

“ This beverage, carried
about in a bright
copper kettle, is the
celebrated New Year’s
morning Het Pint of
Edinburgh and Glasgow.”

Athole Brose

1 pint medium oatmeal,1/2 pint cold water, 1/4 pint malt whisky, 4 desert spoons heather honey, 1/4 pint cream.

Mix the oatmeal in the basin with the water. When blended, cover, and stand for about an hour, then strain, pressing the oatmeal well down with a wooden spoon so that all the creamy liquid is blended with the water. Mix the liquid with the whisky and honey. Stir until blended, then stir in the cream. Serve at room temperature in wine glasses

“Athole Brose is served to
first-footers at Hogmanay.”

“When merry Yule_day comes, I trow,
You’ll scantins fin’ a hungry mou;
Sma’ are our cares, stamacks fou
O’ gusty gear,
An’ kickshaws, strangers to our view,
Sin’ fairn year.”
-R. Fergusson: The Daft Days

Yule Ale (Meg Dods’ recipe)

Boil for twenty minutes 4 pounds of molasses in from 6 to 8 gallons of soft water with a handful of hops tied in a muslin rag or a little extract of gentian. When cooled in the tub, add a pint of good beer yeast, or from 4 to 6 quarts of fresh worts from the brewer’s vat. Cover the beer with blankets or coarse cloths and let it stand for a day. Pour it from the lees and bottle it. A little ginger may be added to the boiling liquid if the flavour is liked, instead of the hops. This is a cheap and very wholesome Beverage.

As Granny used to say:

“Rise, auld wife and shak your feathers,
Dinnae think that we are beggars.
We’re but bairnies oot tae play
Rise up and gie us oor Hogmanay!”

Plum Porridge (Meg Dod’s recipe)

“There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by
Plum-porridge stood, and Christmas pie;
Nor failed old Scotland to produce,
At such high tide, her savoury goose.”
- Scott: Marmion

Shin of beef, veal (optional), raisins, currants, prunes, pepper, mace, nutmeg.

Boil ten pounds of a shin for five hours in a gallon, or rather more, of water. Skin carefully. Strain off the liquor and to it a piece of veal cut from the fillet. Soften the crumb of a penny loaf in the soup and beat it smoothly. Thicken the soup with this and put to it half a pound of cleansed stoned raisins and half a pound of stoned prunes, a pound of currants well cleaned, and some pepper, mace and grated nutmeg. When the fruit is soft the dish is ready. A little more bread may be used if greater consistence is wanted, and the veal may be omitted.

“Plum pottage can readily enough be identified as a very ancient British dish of Celtic origin associated with the festival of Yuletide.”

“The Celtic god Dagia, or Dagodevos, was the deity of plenty, of the fruits of the Earth, and lord of a capacious cauldron resembling the Cornucopia, which contained all manner of delicious things. In this cauldron, which was called Undry, he cooked his porridge, a mess composed of corn-meal, meat and fruit, the exact replica indeed of the ‘plum-porridge’ of our ancestors.”

“There is evidence that the pottage of the God of Plenty was in pagan Britain a dish associated with the Yuletide festival, when the sun was at its farthest distance from the equator, and when it was therefore on the point of returning on its genial course to fructify the Earth, of whose future abundance the varied and luscious pottage of the Dagda was the symbol and portent.”
- Lewis Spence.

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