#notedinburgh — Public Fediverse posts

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The thread about the Macaroni Pie; how pasta tubes and cheese sauce have deeper roots in Scottish cuisine than you might think

It is time now for another important piece of Scottish culinary history, so let us go beneath the crunchy, cheesy crust of the Macaroni Pie and find out a little bit more about the history of this gastronomic delicacy. Let’s be clear, macaroni is a globally ubiquitous foodstuff and there’s more than one type of macaroni pie out there; it’s got an important place in Caribbean cuisine for instance. What we’re looking at here is the macaroni and cheese in a Scotch pie case sort of a pie.

The macaroni pie, © Bayne’s Family Bakers

Macaroni arrived in Scotland as an exotic foodstuff in the mid-to-late 18th century. In 1767 the Caledonian Mercury (one of Scotland’s earliest regular newspaper) carried an advert by the Edinburgh merchant Hugh Campbell that he had for sale in his shop “leaf and pipe macarony”

Caledonian Mercury, 1767

Adverts for it are irregular thereafter, but it was available in 1830 to “the nobility, gentry and public in general” from London grocers A. Zambelli and W. Fletcher who were advertising it to a Scottish audience in the Scotsman. “Macaroni” at this time probably meant any type of tube or pipe pasta in the English language press and remained exotic as it had a tax on import of 8d in the lb, from which we can calculate 38.8t of it were imported into the UK in 1832 when the tax was reduced. The Macaroni imported at this time was still handmade in Italy from Italian wheat, so even the tax breaks didn’t make it much more accessible to the general population. George Thomson auctioned 50 boxes of it in Leith at Sibbald’s Warehouse in 1838 and by 1862 you could have it imported from Italy “in a great variety of shapes” for 6d per lb from Robert D. Thomson, Grocer, of 23 South St. Andrew Street. By comparison, bread was selling at 2d per lb in Edinburgh in 1862.

Fine Italian Macaroni. 1838

The doyenne of the Victorian Kitchen, Mrs Beeton, published one of the first recognisable macaroni cheese recipes in her book in 1861. She recommended boiling the macaroni for 1.5-1.75 hours (!) in salted milk and serving it alongside the cheese course. Clearly what you were getting was a mushy, milky and slightly cheesy slop. In 1878, the People’s Friend magazine in Dundee published its own recipe. It describes breaking the macaroni into “3-inch lengths” before boiling, from which we can surmise they were perhaps using something much longer than modern elbow macaroni, more akin to spaghetti or bucatini. It was to be cooked for 30 minutes in water, then stewed in milk and then cheese (Parmesan and Gruyère) and butter would be added and the whole lot toasted over the fire.

It did not take someone long to figure out you could serve macaroni in a pie – one of the earliest recipes I can find is in the Leith Herald of 1867, repeated from the Cassel’s Dictionary of Cookery, for a “Game and Macaroni Pie” where the pasta bulked out a stew of game birds.

A Game and Macaroni Pie, Leith Herald, 1867

In 1869, there were 30 boxes of macaroni for Auction by Mr Dowell at 18 George Street. In 1875 an anonymous letter writer to the Scotsman bemoaned he was “afflicted with a cook” who did not know how to prepare macaroni, and could the poor of the city not be taught cookery? In 1886 you could treat yourself to the Café Royal dining rooms where luncheon included a macaroni soup and dinner had a “macaroni au gratin“. You can still dine in the splendour of the same rooms to this day, but macaroni it seems is off the menu.

The Victorian splendour of the Café Royal dining room

In 1888 Mrs Black of the West End Training School of Cookery, Glasgow, was leading classes in Aberdeen for prospective cooks which included learning how to make “Savoury Macaroni” But in Scotland, macaroni is still a fancy food for a select few of the upper classes at this point. Macaroni Pie recipes at this time are quite common, particularly in American cookbooks, where they are basically dishes of macaroni and various meats topped with cheese, served in a gravy or white sauce, and baked into a savoury slab. They do not resemble “our” Macaroni Pie. By the 1890s it is appearing in Vegetarian cookbooks, which was very a la mode. These dishes include turnips and tomatoes and a suggestion to serve it with boiled lettuce. Finally in 1897 we see the first hints in Scotland that Macaroni is becoming more widely available – the Linlithgowshire Gazette and the Falkirk Herald carry in their “Nice Dishes” sections, on the same day, a recipe for Fish and Macaroni Pie.

“Nice Dishes” from 1897

There are two things I think that mean that macaroni is becoming more affordable; firstly, production in Italy was being mechanised. Secondly, in both Canada and Australia, substantial quantities of Durum wheat (or “macaroni wheat” as they also called it) were becoming available. In 1902 the Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette published an unconventional macaroni pie recipe, with hard boiled eggs included and finished off in the oven soaked in stock.

Macaroni Pie, 1902, Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette

From then on, the provincial Scottish papers are frequently printing various recipes for macaroni pie dishes. The Selkirk “Southern Reporter” included lamb or mutton in theirs. The Barrhead News favoured fish, the Arbroath Herald recommended smokies. But what may have really begun popularising the combination of macaroni and cheese upon the Scottish palate was another Scottish invention; refined corn starch – which was patented by John Polson of Paisley muslin manufacturers Brown & Polson.

Brown & Polson’s Patent Cornflour went all around the world and is a brand still sold in India

Brown & Polson’s corn flour made home thickening of sauces exceptionally easy, and they became a global household name. No store cupboard was complete without it, and they advertised heavily in Scottish newspapers. Adverts for Brown & Polson’s from 1910 up to the outbreak of WW1 consistently push “macaroni cheese” as a good use for their product.

Brown & Polson’s newspaper advert suggesting Macaroni Cheese as a use for the product

The Scottish macaroni cheese market was restrained by WW1, when wheat shortages saw punitive licence fees put on the production of macaroni; 18s per 280lb sack of flour, under the Flour and Bread Prices Order of 1917. Post-war, the revitalisation of the macaroni scene in Scotland was slow. It began to take off again in the 1920s when Canadian production of durum wheat and macaroni began to outstrip Italy’s. Canada went from importing 7,000,000lb per annum of macaroni from Italy to producing 12,000,000lb, and in exported 2,229,000lb of Macaroni, principally to the US, Great Britain and Belgium. Macaroni was cheap and plentiful again!

A bite out of a Macaroni Pie © Cookipedia

In June 1920 we have the first evidence of the “modern” Macaroni Pie in Scotland, when Hays bakers in the city of Dundee advertises them for sale at 4d each (therefore not hugely cheap at the time). Other bakers in Dundee would follow suit, but Hays seems to have got the first advert out. The city of “Jute, Jam and Journalism” clearly deserves its alternative moniker of the “City of Discovery” for discovering for us the culinary wonder that happens when you stick macaroni cheese in a hot water crust pastry case and bake it in an oven and serve it warm.

Dundee Evening Telegraph, June 1920, Scotland’s first Macaroni Pies as we understand them now?

Another factor that re-popularised macaroni among the working classes was its inclusion in state-sponsored cookery classes aimed at working class housewives as part of a response acknowledging the role of poor diet and nutrition in public health. In Edinburgh in 1929, the The Public Health Board were running cookery classes “to introduce into the daily dietary such neglected substances as peas, beans, rice, lentils, vegetables and macaroni“. This was a concerted effort to improve the diets of children – it was recognised “lack of suitable nourishment” was a “serious handicap”. Dr John Guy gave a lecture to housewives extolling the virtues of Macaroni and cheese of “form[ing] a cheap and satisfying diet [for children].” In 1933, the first Scottish macaroni manufacturer was incorporated – company #17,420, Macaroni Manufacturers Glasgow, with £500 capital, by Fidele Todisco of 27 Chisholm Street and a relation, Antionio Todisco of Redcar, Yorkshire.

The site of Scotland’s first ever macaroni manufactory in Glasgow

The Scottish macaroni business went from strength to strength. In 1936, Glaswegian James Marshall got in on the act, and was complimented by the Duchess of York for his exhibition stand of macaroni at the Scottish foodstuffs display in the British Industries House.

Marshall’s Macaroni, still a Scottish staple

Domestic production couldn’t keep up with demand – by 1936, Canada was advertising macaroni directly to Edinburgh – calling on Edinburghers to buy plentiful, cheap and quality Canadian produce including macaroni.

“Canada Calling Edinburgh” a direct appeal for Scots to buy Canadian produce (which included Macaroni)

With war clouds looming, Macaroni got an unexpected boost, with the Scottish newspapers being full of helpful (but unappetising) recipes using it to bulk out scrap meat dishes (in a manner similar to stovies) or as “an old favourite” – macaroni cheese.

“Three Suggestions for Meatless Days”. The macaroni cheese is in the left hand dish.

But the effects of the long war took their toll and in 1941 Spaghetti and Macaroni were put under price controls as “canned vegetables”. Pre-cooked macaroni in a cream and cheese sauce was fixed at 4d per 8oz can.

Bad news for Macaroni in 1941

It was however not until after the war that macaroni was rationed (prior to that it just wasn’t easily available). In 1946 it “went on points” due to wheat shortages and wheat being reserved for bread production . By 1947, macaroni was off points again, but the same reports frankly admitted that supplies were “limited” and there was to be no new issue expected. Macaroni was not gone for long, and in 1950 the Directory of Education for Clackmannan reported on “communal feeding in schools” but noted macaroni cheese was an “unpopular dish” and that 25% of children were turning it down. He said that “Empty stomachs led to mental ineptitude” and bemoaned that there were “still some houses where the jeely piece was too common” and where “fish and chips was the regular daily dish at high tea“. Given that contemporary recipes still recommended boiling the macaroni for an hour, it’s hardly surprising they didn’t like the end product.

Three macaroni recipes from 1948, the “Tried Favourite Cookery Book” by Mrs E. W. Kirk. Image courtesy of Caroline Docherty

So there you have it. Macaroni has been kicking around Scottish cuisine for a lot longer than you might have thought (certainly far longer than fish and chips!) and unless anyone can prove otherwise, the Macaroni Pie seems to have originated in Dundee in 1920ish.

Awfy braw!

And here’s what started me off on the concept of this thread off a month ago, a North Boats menu from an Orkney or Shetland steamer from 1948, pride of place in Aberdeen Maritime Museum.

North Boat lunch menu, July 2nd 1948 © Self

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

The thread about the Lorne, Square, Slicing and the Sliced Sausage: neither square nor from Lorn

We have looked at Plain Bread. We have delved into the depths of the Macaroni pie. We have examined the origins of Neeps and Haggis. So now we must turn our gaze upon that other stalwart of Scottish cuisine; the Lorne aka Square aka Sliced aka Slicing sausage. For the purposes of this thread we’ll just called it Lorne sausage. So what is this delicacy? In essence it’s a log of mince beef and suet, breadcrumb and some seasoning, moulded in a tin and then cut into slices for frying. You can see from the picture that the cross-section of the “square” sausage is actually trapezoid, a result of it being formed by pressing into loaf tins. When it cooks, the perimeter contracts and it takes on a more rounded, irregular shape.

Sliced and Unsliced Lorne, © Ramsay of Carluke)

The Lorne is a high fat sausage – traditionally 20-25% additional fat is added on top of the fat already in the meat. It sheds much of this when cooked, but the end result is still a very succulent slab of beefy hangover cure, particularly with the addition of brown sauce. This sausage is not so much an invention as an evolution of aspects of traditional Scottish cookery so no precise date can be put on it coming into existence, but by the 1880s it begins to come up in advertising. More on that later, but lets focus on its roots. I would put the predecessor of the Lorne not in sausagemaking but in another old Scots favourite; the Collop. Collops (from the French Escalope) were thinly sliced meat served akin to veal scalopini; floured and fried and served in a rich, creamy, winey sauce. The Minced Collop was meat first put through the mincer with seasoning and formed into a patty to fry.

“To make Minced Collops”, Susannah Maciver’s 1773 “Cookery and Pastry” book, one of Scotland’s earliest published cookbooks.

While the collop fell out of favour, nearly analogous caseless sausages are quite common in 19th century cookbooks.

Skinless sausage recipe, from “Receipts in Modern Cooking” of 1820 by Alexander Hunter

Or in the wonderfully titled “The Cook and Housewife’s Manual; Containing the Most Approved Modern Receipts for Making Soups, Gravies, Sauces, Ragouts, And Made-Dishes; And for Pies Puddings, Pastry, Pickles, and Preserves; …” of 1826 by Margaret Dods of Edinburgh.

Margaret Dods 1826 recipe for a caseless sausage

Although any type of meat can go into a sausage, in Scotland they preferred beef, and pork was not a particularly common foodstuff anyway. They also favoured using good meat in sausages, not just the scraps and unmentionables.

In England, the best steaks are cut from the middle of the rump. In Scotland, steaks which are thought more delicate, are cut, like chops, from the sirloin or spare rib, trimming off the superfluous fat and chopping away the bone. This is the piece of meat usually cut up in to steaks in the shops in Edinburgh and Glasgow, rump beef being used for minced collops and beef sausage.

Margaret Dods on steaks for sausages, 1826

But such caseless sausages were not just a Scottish thing. Mrs Beeton gives a recipe in 1861 of something very close to a pork and beef Lorne when not put into skins.

Mrs Beeton’s 1861 caseless sausage recipe

So by the 2nd half of the 19th century, caseless, fatty, beefy sausages were nothing particularly new to Scottish cuisine. The earliest references I can turn up specifically to Lorne are butcher adverts in Greenock in 1884 and 1885 as “slice” and “slicing” sausages. Grant’s Stores of Renton can take the award for the earliest mention I can find of the name “Lorne” in reference to this sausage. Clearly sausages were big business in Renton; as the advert says,
“OUR SAUSAGE DEPARTMENT
IS QUITE A SUCCESS“
Note also that they minced collops for sale, so clearly the Lorne and minced collops are recognised as separate items.

Grant’s of Renton, the first advertised Lorne Sausages? Lennox Herald, 1892

But at this time, the name is much more frequently “sliced” or “slicing” sausage. In 1896 a case came up in Coatbridge where a woman, Ellen McLauchlan, was charged with “throwing a large quantity of sliced sausage on the street”. She was fined 5s or offered 3 days imprisonment.

Coatbridge Express 1896

In 1900 in Motherwell, Edwards’ was selling Slicing Sausages using the slogan “A treat. Try them!” at 8d. The business did not trouble to give its address. So what about the name? As I say, sliced and slicing is much more common in newspaper archive search hits. Lorne comes up much less frequently, and is almost entirely confined to the locality of Kirriemuir and Angus. 173 of 234 (almost 3 quarters) of the search results pre-1950 come from that locality.

There’s something of a legend that the Lorne sausage was invented by – or named after – Glaswegian stage comedian Tommy Lorne. He certainly used jokes about it in his routines. But that’s cobblers, he was only 2 years old when it was first advertised. There’s also the small issue of Tommy Lorne being just a stage name for a man whose real name was Hugh Corcoran

Tommy Lorne, © The Glasgow Story

Alternative theories for the name include some sort of connection to the Marquis of Lorne – but I can’t find any – or to a butcher in the district of Lorn, but there is no evidence from newspaper archives that such a product was being advertised there, it seems to be a product docussed on the central belt and east coast of Scotland. Interestingly although sliced/slicing/square/Lorne sausages almost never come up in archival English newspapers, the very first recipe I can find for something called Lorne Sausage is from a 1913 issue of the Nottingham and Midland Catholic News.

The first publicly offered recipe for a Lorne Sausage? Instantly recognisable as the same product you can buy today.

The Lorne sausage went to war in 1917 when – in order to save on imported flour – the military authorities in Scotland ordered that soldiers stationed in the country have a diet with less bread and – amongst other things – more Lorne Sausages.

Scotsman, May 1917, article on military catering economies of the Scottish Command

The Lorne Sausage clearly had a place in military catering; it appears in the 1933 Manual of Military Cooking & Dietary published by the HMSO for army caterers, again it is something almost instantly recognisable as the product we today call a Lorne Sausage.

1933 British Army Lorne Sausage

Wartime restrictions – in place between 1917 and 1920 – caught out at least 1 butcher. Charles McGown appeared before the Sheriff in Glasgow in June 1919 charged with selling “slicing sausage” as “steak sausage“. The defence of “a Lorne sausage isn’t actually a sausage, your honour” failed. Fine – £3.

Scotsman , June 1919

Lorne Sausage went to war again in 1939. In 1942 due to the perilous food situation, the Ministry of Food licensed the use of soya flour instead of bread rusk in its production (and also that of Scottish favourites Haggis and black pudding) .

Scotsman, May 1942

Later the same year the quality of Lorne again took a hit when Lord Woolton (of Woolton Pie) at the Ministry of Food ordered the meat content of sausages, including specifically “slicing sausage” dropped to between 30 and 43%. The price was fixed at 8d per lb, the same as beef links. These sausages were therefore about 50-60% suet and soya flour rusk… Good news was announced to suffering consumers in 1945 though when the meat content of beef slicing sausage was increased by 10% (at the cost of 1 1/2d more per lb).

Bad news came in 1947 though as the worsening post-war supply situation saw a shortage of dripping and the Ministry of Food ordered that the fat would now be mixed with vegetable fats, and that such fat was now considered part of the meat content. Back to rusky sausages! 4,000 butchers of the Scottish Federation of Meat Traders complained to the government in 1948 that they were being treated unfairly and getting short allocations of meat ration. They alleged that this was the result of the supply calculations being based on English butchery habits, where sausages were typically made in factories and supplied to the butcher, whereas in Scotland the butchers still typically made their own. In a thinly veiled attack on the high rusk sausages they were forced to produce, they stated “Flour confectionery is a poor substitute for the breakfast sausage“. The Lorne sausage crossed the Atlantic in the 1950s with waves of Scottish emigration from the land of postwar austerity and rusky sausages to the opportunity of the new world. Ontario newspapers are full of adverts at this time.

Ontario Intelligencer, 1953

In more recent times, both Aldi and a company called Cottam Foods from Cheshire have humiliated themselves in public by bringing (pork) square sausages to the market and making wild claims that they have invented them. The Cottam’s Squig looks like it might be a pressed patty, whereas the ALDI “square pork sausage” has a texture more akin to SPAM and looks to be sliced off of a compressed block by a very sharp blade.

Cottam Food’s “Squig”, a “square pork sausage”ALDI “square pork sausage”

While beef remains traditional, pork and beef mixes, or pork Lorne have long been available, and the discerning customer can select steak Lorne. A recent innovation is the Blackeye or Blackheart Lorne, with a core of back pudding (📷)

A blackeye Lorne sausage © S. Collin & Sons

So let’s hear it for the humble Lorne Sausage, it’s much more than just a hangover cure, it’s the sausage that we don’t know why it is called “Lorne”. And lets hear it for the Square Sausage, the sausage that is definitively trapezoid and not square. At least it is actually sliced.

“A Roll on Slice”, © Bayne’s Family Baker

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

The thread about the “Three As” of Scottish motor manufacturing and a pioneering woman who figured within

This thread was originally written and published in November 2021. It has been lightly edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

Today’s auction house artefact is this splendidly shiny McVitie & Price 1924 digestive biscuit delivery van, an Albion Type 24 built in Scotstoun in Glasgow. Estimated to sell for £24-28k. Albions were apparently the grocery delivery van of choice way back when this was built, being economical and reliable. Lyons, Nestles, Huntley & Palmer and of course Edinburgh biscuiteers McVitie & Price were big customers.

McVitie & Price Albion Type 24

The Model 24 could also be built as a bus.

Albion Type 24 with bus body. (Pic © Scottish Motor Museum)

The radiator badge was originally a cast logotype stylised to look like a lion. To this a rising sun was later added in various guises. The product line names and badges later got a bit more patriotic.

Albion radiator badges through the ages

Albion was one of the “Three As” of Scottish motor engineering, along with Argyll in Alexandria and Arrol-Johnston in Paisley.

Argyll expanded massively into the biggest car plant in Europe in 1906 and crippled themselves with the costs and inefficient production methods. They were bankrupt within a year. The factory limped a while until the costs of lawsuits finally closed the doors. The place later became a Royal torpedo factory and enjoyed a much longer life as such. It continued as such into the late 1960s, when it was bought by Plessey, promptly closed, lay vacant for 30 odd years and was then fortuitously saved as a shopping centre.

The Argyll car factory in Alexandria, later became a torpedo factory. CC-BY-SA 4.0 LesleyMitchell

Arrol-Johnston (the Arrol from the famous Sir William Arrol who built a certain big red bridge over the Forth) prospered better, and in 1913 moved to a purpose built factory in Dumfries. They got the Americans to build it for mass production. The factory at Heathhall was built by the architect who built Henry Ford’s second factory for the Model T. A very sensible move. Looking futuristic for 1913, it was the first reinforced “Ferro-concrete” building in Britain apparently.

Arrol-Johnston’s Dumfries works, © Le Couvey-Martin Family Archives

Although the company later failed, an interesting aside was the “Galloway” a car designed by a woman, built by Arrol-Johnston’s largely female workforce, for the woman motorist; Dorothée Pullinger was daughter of Arrol-Johnston’s managing director and chief designer, Thomas Pullinger.

Dorothée Pullinger. © Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

She started work in the Arrol-Johnston drawing office at the age of 16, and when the First World War broke out, the 20 year old Dorothée was sent to the Vickers works in Barrow to be the “Lady Superintendent” of the 7,000 women workers producing munitions in the factory. Awarded an MBE for her service, she was nevertheless refused entrance into the Institute of Automobile Engineers until 1920, it’s first woman member. Back at Arrol-Johnston after the war, the Galloway was largely designed and built in a subsidiary called Galloway Motors, which largely employed the female expertise and labour that had been built up during WW1 on war work.

Galloway car on display at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow. CC-By-SA 4.0 Midwich Cuckoo

They were initially sold under a strapline of “a car made by ladies for others of their sex“. Galloway’s apprenticeships for engineers only last 3 instead of 5 years as it was felt that the women attended better and learned faster than men and so could get it all done sooner. Dorothée won the Scottish Six Day Trial in 1924 in a Galloway. She went on to have a long and successful career in running industrial steam laundry companies and was the only female industrial advisor to the Ministry of Production, advised the sprawling Nuffield group on the employment of women and helped to set up and run 13 war factories with them. Dorothée described her job as being “to see that the fullest use is made of woman-power throughout the Nuffield Organisation“.

Of the Three As, Albion fared the best and were bought by Leyland in 1951 therefore found their way into that particular stable and everything it entails. In the 1970s, British Leyland slowly rationalised the Albion product lines and production, with some moving to other BL plants. In 1972 they rebadged all Albions as Leylands. In 1980 all production in Glasgow moved to the Bathgate Truck & Tractor Plant.

British Motor Corporation’s Bathgate Truck & Tractor Plant

In 1984, a collapse in BL’s fortunes saw the huge and modern plant in Bathgate shut down, with a crippling effect on a local economy also being hit with steelworks and colliery closures. In 1987 two young lads from Auchtermuchty wrote a song about it and other things.

That was not quite the end for Albion though, as truck components were still being made in the Scotstoun factory. When Leyland DAF collapsed in 1993, the business was bought out as Albion Automotive. In 1998, the new company was acquired by the American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. of Motown, Detroit, producing various transmission comonents and – I think – they are still hanging on in Scotstoun in a much reduced form.

And Digestive biscuits, that fine Edinburgh invention? Still being made, (although the McVities name is now mud in certain Scottish households thanks to recent industrial developments).

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

Creamola Foam: the thread about a bubbly treat with an unpalatable skeleton in its family closet

There are few words that will get some Scottish folk as misty eyed, nostalgic and feeling wistful as “Creamola Foam“. But what is this apocryphal delicacy? How and where did it come to be? And just what is its dark secret? Add two teaspoons, stir, and let’s find out. The foam in question is a fairly simple – and entirely artificial – chemical concoction that was sold widely in Scotland but hasn’t been available since brand owners Nestle cancelled it in 1998. One just mixed two teaspoons of its crystals with water and you had yourself a satisfyingly synthetic, fizzy, foamy (and slightly grainy) drink.

Excerpt from a 1950s Creamola Foam advert.

Its composition is a blend of fruit acids with bicarbonate of soda, which react when dissolved in water to produce the fizz of carbon dioxide bubbles. The addition of a foaming agent – saponin – gives the drink a beery head and Acacia or Arabic Gum is included to thicken it. Sugar and saccharin sweeten it and chemical flavourings and colourings provide the suitably chemical taste and appearance.

Creamola Foam was unleashed upon the Scottish public in May 1932 at the Daily Mail’s Ideal Homes and Foods Exhibition in the Kittybrewster Olympia Hall in Aberdeen. “Those who try [it] will appreciate this delicious, wholesome refreshment” said the visiting reviewer from the Press & Journal. Initially available in two flavours- lemon and orange – lime and then ginger were soon added to the line up. The manufacturers – Creamola Food Products – were already a household name but went heavy on the advertising and soon had themselves a runaway success.

1932 Advert for Ginger Creamola Foam.

The Creamola company mascot – a kilted, rosy cheeked boy with an oversize bunnet and a neckerchief – was prominently featured in newspaper campaigns. The drink was compared to sparkling like “a vintage champagne“, with “glittering, cool white foam” and as providing “a long and satisfying drink“.

1930s Newspaper advert for Creamola Foam featuring the Creamola company mascot.

But don’t believe the advertiser’s schtick, this “glorious“, “real fruit” drink was nothing but high school chemistry in a glass.

As you drink you realize that you have found something that is utterly new and worth while. “Creamola Foam” is a fruit drink that sparkles like a vintage champagne! Above is glittering, cool white foam. Below is a long and satisfying drink with the flavour of fresh fruit alive and leaping in its heart, as if you stood beneath the tree squeezing the sweetened juice of ripe fruit into your mouth. A glorious drink. The sort of drink that makes you dig in the garden on purpose to produce a thirst worthy of a second foaming goblet. A spoonful of its crystals – fill the glass with water – stir – and enjoy your drink. Lemon and Orange flavours.

Creamola Foam advertising, 1930s

This wasn’t just a product for the masses though, advertising in the late 1930s has a real middle-class, aspirational vibe to it; the man of the house sits around in his 3 piece suit on his hire-purchase sofa, while his elegant, be-frocked wife serves him up refreshing glasses of Foam.

1930s newspaper advert for Creamola Foam.

Creamola Foam it was claimed was “refreshing as a sea breeze” (which, in this country usually means it is violent, intensely salty and will strip the paint off of a car).

1930s newspaper advert for Creamola Foam.

The product wasn’t rationed during WW2 but by and large wasn’t readily available as the country had better uses for its ingredients than novelty drinks. It was relaunched post-war with a change of flavours and a new formula that dialled-back the effervescence; “Foams Without Fizz“.

The Creamola company was bought by Rowntree in 1966. Attempts by its new owners to popularise the foam to a larger market in England were tried but ended up in failure. However it retained a soft spot amongst generations of Scottish hearts, minds and stomachs and so production of this industrial refreshment continued.

The formulation changed again in the 1980s to return it to being a much fizzier drink, truer to the original and it remained this way with more modern foaming and thickening agents up until what was a rather niche, provincial product was cancelled by the Swiss bean-counters at Nestlé 🇨🇭

Two generations of Creamola Foam packaging.

The Creamola Food Products Ltd. of Glasgow was a household name in Scotland – and beyond – in the first half of the 20th century. From the 1930s their factory was in the Plantation district (more on that appropriateness later).

The Creamola Custard Works in the Plantation Bakery, Nos 63-73 Durham Street, Glasgow

The company built up a huge range of popular, brand-name household products around the simple concept of packet of a starch-based thickener and/or setting agent to which sweetening, flavouring and colouring was added to turn it into a wide range of desserts and puddings.

The Creamola product lineup, from a 1935 recipe booklet issued by the company. Picture © Mike Ashworth and reproduced with permission.

Rice, wheat, cornflour, sago, tapioca, gelatine, arrowroot. You name it, if it would set or thicken, Creamola would packet it and sell it to you as a tasty treat. The company relied heavily on advertising to hawk their wares and claimed that they “tickle[d] the World’s Palate!”

Creamola 1947 Magazine (from University of Glasgow UGD 257: Records of Creamola Food Products Ltd, 1904-1991.)

Creamola kept their products constantly in the public eyes via newspaper adverts in the 1920s and 30s, pushing themselves relentlessly as “The Queen of Custards” and giving serving suggestions and recipes such as apple trifle and fruit pudding. But it wasn’t just newspaper advertising, their posters too were once commonplace. The (colourised) photograph below from 1929 shows a gable end at Arthur Street, in Edinburgh’s Dumbiedykes district, has a poster for their principal product – Creamola Custard – prominently in the centre. It is has a personal touch for me as some of my Mum’s family lived in the tenement to the left in the the preceding decade.

Creamola Food Products came into being on December 29th 1919 when the Glasgow company of D. K. Porter & Co. was incorporated as a limited company. They took the name of their principal product, itself borrowed off a defunct Victorian brand; “the cream of toilet soaps“. Porters were an established importer of arrowroot; a food thickener popular with the Victorian dietetic and invalid food movements. The switch to cheaper, cornstarch based-products was an obvious one, that product having been invented, patented and first manufactured on an industrial scale just down the road in Paisley by Brown & Polsons.

Porters first launched their Creamola Custard Pudding product in 1910 at the Ideal Home Exhibition, a “new preparation“; “a highly nourishing food, the nitrogenous or flesh forming material which it contains being enormously increased in comparison with is found in other farinaceous foods“. Yes I’ve no idea what they really meant either. Success came quickly and when war began a few years later in 1914, the company saw a commercial opportunity and made sure their new product was sent to our boys on the front by donating 70,000 tins of it to the Red Cross for their food parcels. The papers declared, “All parcels now going to France should contain at least one tin of Creamola“. On the home front, Porters were quick to remind housewives that their products didn’t require eggs so were “an incalculable advantage” to keeping children full of puddings during times of shortage. Note again that purposeful, middle class vibe to the advert below.

1916 Creamola newspaper advert.

By 1917, Porters were declaring in adverts “Youth *must* be served even in these days when food is scarce… and CREAMOLA is the ideal means of making up to the children with “growing” appetites for the meat shortage“. By the following year, the food situation was critical at home as the result of the German U-boat blockade of British trade, but Porters were there for the nation with their ersatz puddings to keep people full with thickeners. “Let rations be what they will. Creamola Custard Pudding will ever make up the shortage” they boldly stated. Wartime business boomed to the extend that Porters couldn’t keep up with demand and so moved to a new factory on Great Clyde Street, along the riverside.

D. K. Porter’s Great Clyde Street “Creamola Custard Works.” (Mitchell library)

To keep up with the insatiable demand for custard puddings, the machinery was run 24/7 and the company relentlessly strived to make the process more efficient by doing things like taking out air filters and not recovering and recycling spilled flours. And this caused a problem because right next door to the factory was the chapel house of St. Andrew’s R.C. Cathedral, which was greatly disturbed by the non-stop whirr and clatter of custard machinery, and the relentless film of fine white powders coating everything. Porters denied that they were causing a noise and dust nuisance and hoped that Archbishop Macguire would go away if they ignored him. But the Archbishop was not to be messed with and the company found themselves hauled infront of Lord Hunter at the Court of Session in a law suit.

An independent investigator found that the “clicking sound produced by the speed-reducing gears of the mixing machines and the tapping sound of the lever at the weighing machines” were indeed a nuisance to the Archbishop’s peace His Lordship concurred and Porters were ordered to stop their night shifts and to put the filters back on to keep the dust levels down. The company acquiesced and were then keen to advertise to let the hungry public know that they could keep up with demand by dayshift working alone.

D. K. Porters newspaper after published after losing the lawsuit.

By the end of that year, 1919, the Porter name was gone and it was Creamola Food Products above the door henceforth. And we all lived happily ever after and that’s the end of our story.

Or is it?

The key to really unravelling the D. K. Porter story, right to the back of the closet where one might find skeletons, is in arrowroot. This is a staple South American and Caribbean foodstuff from whose roots can be extracted a starchy thickening agent. Gluten free, it was popular with the Victorian dietetic and invalid diet movements.

Arrowroots. CC-by-SA 2.5 Noblevmy

As early as 1884, D. K. Porter were importing bulk arrowroot into the port of Ayr from St. Vincent in the Caribbean, for sale in the market at Kilmarnock. Over time the centre of economic gravity dragged their trade inevitably to Glasgow where we can follow a breadcrumb trail in newspapers adverts of of their “Three Rivers Brand“. Three Rivers it turns out was a plantation estate on the island of St. Vincent and who should own it but D. K. Porter & Co., St. Vincent.

D. K. Porter were a vertically integrated operation you see; they were not just the importer but also the producer, the exporter and the shipper too. The company was a partnership between David Kennedy Porter – born in Riccarton, Ayrshire in 1820 – and James Graham, a London-born Scot. Both emigrated to St. Vincent where they went into business, slowly building up a portfolio of sugar plantations. They exploited two circumstances on St. Vincent. Firstly, the emancipation of plantation slaves there in 1838 and secondly the Encumbered Estates Act of 1856 which saw the forced sale of bankrupt estates. As a result of this, Freed slaves found themselves pushed to marginal lands as men like Porter and Graham bought up the bankrupt estates on the cheap and consolidated them into a small number of large holdings. They brought in indentured labourers from India starting in the 1860s to work their fields. In 1829, St. Vincent had 98 separate sugar estates. By 1882 nearly all the cultivatable land was owned by just five landowners of which D. K. Porter were the largest, their 22 estates was nearly half of all plantations by number and fully two thirds by area of all productive land on the island.

The company had St. Vincent nicely stitched up. They controlled the local legislature. They were “vehemently opposed to the introduction of central mills” which might have helped small proprietors and sharecroppers, and indeed were generally opposed to any improvements on the island. “It was the labouring population that suffered most from this selfish and parsimonious attitude concerning the improvement of St. Vincent“. D. K. Porter would only do what was right for D. K. Porter and the company complained their labourers were lazy and reneged on wage payments. They strictly controlled the availability of work and resented improvements to working practices or attempts to improve labour conditions. The campaigned against taxes that would have funded health provision for workers or financed public works.

James Graham died in 1877 having amassed an immense fortune of £250,000, Thomas Rennie Nairn took his place. David Kennedy Porter died in 1891, leaving £105,849. His place is taken by his nephew, also of Riccarton back in Ayrshire, Alexander Porter. Despite having secured a stranglehold on St. Vincent and running a comfortable oligopoly on the back of the labour of others, the new partners found a business in trouble. The price of sugar has crashed following the introduction of sugar beet in industrial quantities to Europe. But instead of working to innovate and improve efficiency of sugar production (and the lot of their workers), they cast around instead for a new money-making scheme and hit upon arrowroot. And so in the 1880s they ripped up nearly all the sugar cane plantations on their estates and planted instead arrowroot.

Arrowroot saved Porters. As sugar exports collapsed, they flooded the markets instead with arrowroot, halving the price of it in Europe. Within 20 years St. Vincent would have an almost complete world monopoly on the stuff. At the helm of a once-again profitable company, Alexander Porter is described as being “unwilling to invest any of his profits in the improvement of either his estates or the island as a whole… an indication of his lack of commitment to the island’s prosperity.” D. K. Porter would probably have been content to sit back and grow rich(er) off of arrowroot, but nature intervened. The island was devastated by floods in 1896, a hurricane in 1898 and finally in 1902 the volcano La Soufrière erupted.

Aftermath of the eruption of La Soufrière in 1902, via Georgetown SVG Revisited

Mount Pelée on nearby Martinique had an even more devastating eruption only hours later, killing 29,000 people. On St. Vincent, 1,680 died, 600 were seriously injured and 4,000 were homeless. Of all the plantations “not a single estate works .. escaped injury“. Up to this point, Alexander Porter had largely resisted outside government intervention by way of financing estate reform, but he died the following year, leaving the business to his sons Donald Fraser and John Gemmel Porter. The sons for a while maintained the father’s position but soon decide to take the Government’s money and sell their estates, the last going in 1909. However the men were modernisers and quick to realise that the easier and more reliable money was not in the cultivation and sale of raw arrowroot to the market, but in the processing of it and sale of end-products direct to consumers. At the Barbados Agricultural Show in 1904 they unveiled their “Three Rivers Brand” of pure, processed, ready-to-use arrowroot. At the same time. the company made determined efforts to try and shift the image of arrowroot from being a food for invalids to one of making easy desserts. They began advertising it for sale in Glasgow, exported from St. Vincent, with a man by the name of William Galbraith Hetherington put in charge of operations in the old country.

William Galbraith Hetherington. (from University of Glasgow UGD 257: Records of Creamola Food Products Ltd, 1904-1991.)

Under Hetherington’s energetic, paternalistic leadership “Three Rivers Arrowroot” began to prosper in Glasgow, rapidly becoming a household brand and it was Hetherington who persuaded the Porter brothers to incorporate as Creamola Food Products. His attitude to workers was the opposite of the Porters and the company ran many social schemes. They donate generously to the Clydeside Air Raid Distress Fund following the Clydebank Blitz in 1941. Hetherington remained at the helm of the company until his death in 1948, leaving an estate if £250,221 and numerous bequests to good causes throughout Glasgow; churches, hospitals, the Salvation Army, schools and other public institutions.

For a company with troubling, colonialist beginnings, Galbraith’s 34 years at the helm reformed its reputation into a conscientious employer and beloved household brand. It may have first made its name in synthetic custard but seems instead to be remembered for its chemistry set soft drinks.

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Plain Breid: the thread about the history, politics and legal travails of Scotland’s national loaf

BREID, Breed, Bred, n. Sc. forms corr. St.Eng. bread.

The curious history and politics of plain breid. A thread.

First things first. Mothers Pride, despite the tartan packaging, is not a Scottish brand – it hails from Manchester and dates to 1932. When the baking industry consolidated in the 1950s-70s, big companies took over medium-sized regional bakers and applied their brands to them (see also Sunblest)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/6661128425

Second things second. Plain Bread was not originally a peculiarly Scottish term; but it is one that has become over time almost universally associated with a specific style of Scottish batch-baked bread, with its closest relations in styles of Irish bread. So what is plain bread and how did it become to be the loaf with such a strong national identity that it is known for today? And why?

Plain Breid is firmly entrenched in the Scottish bantersphere

The term plain bread derives from a Bread Acts in the early part of the 19th century, starting in 1822. Governments have long sought to regulate pricing and quality of bread, going right back to medieval times, in recognition of it being so essential a foodstuff to life. Breads were classified, at the highest levels, as one of 2 types:

• Plain Breads, which were the common breads and to be sold in regulated sizes and/or at regulated prices and;
• Fancy Breads, where the baker was exempt from price and weight control and free to produce the breads he pleased at the sizes and prices he chose

You got plain bread in England as well as in Scotland; it was not just a Scottish thing, but the actual breads themselves that were sold as “plain” were not the same, and there was a distinctly Scottish bread that came to dominate the plain scene in Scotland. There were 2 main reasons for this. Firstly, Scottish wheat is by and large not that suitable for bread so in Scotland, oven-baked bread (not girdle/griddle breads) made much more use of imported, higher-gluten flours.

Secondly, Scottish bakers had a different baking practice for historical reasons. They used a very long-fermentation process (14-16 or more hours), meaning that nobody had to come in overnight to work the dough. This also meant that they could avoid working on the Sabbath; Monday morning’s bread started out on Saturday evening and was then left to its own devices on the Lord’s day, being ready for baking first thing on Monday morning. As such they needed a very different processes to England, and as a result the end product was also very different. But from a definition point of view, it was all plain bread.

As the 19th century progressed, the traditional methods in Scotland persisted – but were industrialised. Scottish bakers developed a batch-baking technique whereby loafs of high-gluten imported wheat were baked together in a large iron box. These loafs were leavened not with baker’s yeast, but with the traditional “barm” (a yeasty liquid from the brewing industry), and had the traditional long fermenting time. The loafs stuck to eachother in the box, and were pulled apart after baking.

Interior of the Malow & Lien bakery in Glasgow, 1917. The plain bread batch baking tray is in the foreground. © Mitchell Library C770

Scottish plain bread therefore has an appreciable crust on the top and bottom, but not on the sides and ends of the loaf; apart from the “ender” loafs whose sides touched the hot edge of the baking box.

The “ender” loafsThe batch partially pulled apartModern plain loafs baked to a traditional batch method, showing the end and middle of the batch. © Christie the BakerPlain loafs cooling at Stag’s bakers in Stornoway, the batch has been torn into quarters to cool, before pulling off the inidividual loafs. Picture © We Love Stornoway

This form of industrialised baking produced a cheap, soft and tasty bread, without a hard, crunchy crust and it did so in large quantities using the principal aspects of the Scottish baking tradition. But it is susceptible to drying out quickly as there is a limited protective crust, and it also produces the irregular ender loafs, which customers are less likely to want.

Trade Union banner of the Cooperative Bakers & Confectioners of Scotland National Federal Union, showing 2 bakers with a batch of plain loafs which are about to be but with a huge knife. From 1912 © Edinburgh City Libraries

So that was what Scottish plain bread is and was, and why it was different from English plain bread – which could be any one of a variety of regional, mass-produced breads, with a totally different technique and ingredients.

Modern industrial plain bread, note it is very pale, with a dense texture and has a heavy crust on the top and bottom. CC-BY-SA Mutt Lunker

Plain bread dominated the Scottish market. It came to account for 75% of *all* bread produced in Scotland, and in Glasgow as much as 90%. It was produced both by small, independent bakers, the Co-operatives and the big bread factories like Macfarlane Lang’s Milanda or Bilslands.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/billielolasorcha/3802306180

In the late 19th century, the Scottish Plain was mainly known locally as the plain loaf but also as the batch loaf or outwith Scotland the Scottish square (but not “Lorne loaf!“). And this is where politics starts to get involved. Back to those Bread Acts; to protect the public from being short changed by the baker, plain breads had to be sold only in avoirdupois units (pounds), and in multiples of 2 or 4 lbs. – the half-quartern and quartern loafs. And plain bread had to, by law and on pain of some pretty hefty fines, be stamped or embossed with the weight. The Scottish batch system meant that the weight could not be embossed on the baking box, so they would have to be marked on afterwards.

This brings us to the “other” type of bread, Fancy bread. Fancy bread was all bread that wasn’t plain bread. For many years, it was the Jenny Lind (centre) that was popular in Scotland – probably a reference to the hairstyle of the famous “Swedish nightingale”.But you could also get “French”, “Viennese”, “Belgian”, breads, amogst others. But those were just names to sell the bread, nearly all Scottish bakers used exactly the same dough for all their fancy breads, so no matter what they called it you basically had the same bread.

Scottish fancy breads, a colour plate from “The modern baker, confectioner and caterer” by John Kirkland, 1907. 1 = French Staff or Long Vienna, 2 = Belgian Roll, 3 = Baton, 4 = Jenny Lind, 5 = Scotch Pan, 6 = Coburg, 7 = Fancy Milk, 8 = Fancy Rumpy

Most bakers would make their batch plain bread and just 1 or 2 styles of Fancy breads. The latter did not have to be marked in set weights. But the custom in Scotland was that the fancy and plain loafs were all sold at the same price and the baker made the fancy loafs smaller to account for their higher production costs. So for instance you could buy your 2lb plain loaf for 2d, or a 2d fancy loaf that weight 1 3/4 lb. This was in contrast to in England where they generally kept the weights the same between plain and fancy breads and varied the price instead.

In England, the predominant style of industrialised Victorian plain bread was the pan loaf, that is loafs baked in individual baking pans, such as the classic Hovis pan. These would be embossed with weights (depending on the period).

Hovis bread pans

But in Scotland, the pan loaf was considered to be a fancy loaf, as it was economically more expensive to produce than the plain batch loaf. You can see a Scotch Pan loaf in the picture of fancy breads above. And this is where Scottish bakers first found themselves falling foul of the bread laws. You see the in 1892, the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act consolidated many existing municipal laws into one, including those on weights and measures concerning bread (how the Bread Acts were enforced in practice)

Excerpt from the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act, 1892

Notice that the relevant section (427) did not actually determine in any way what constituted “plain” or “fancy” breads. It just differentiated the two – more on that soon. As mentioned before, the practice was for bakeries to sell a plain loaf in 2lb or 4lb sizes, marked as such in accordance with the law, and a few (or even just 1) “fancy” bread. These were once Jenny Lind loafs, but in the 1890s were predominantly becoming pan loafs.

Because you got less bread for your money with a pan loaf in Scotland, people considered it to be a premium product. Whereas in England the pan loaf was the staple plain bread, it became associated in Scotland with having a little bit more to spend, with acting “above your station”. The phrase pan loaf voiced became associated with being “well spoken”, a sort of Scottish RP, expertly roasted in this classic Scotrail TV advert.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5eBC1-YD9Wo

And in the legendary song, the distinction is noted (sung in the Glasgow accent, “one” becomes “wan” to rhyme with “pan”);

If it’s butter, cheese or jeely, if the breid is plain or pan,
The odds against it reaching earth and ninety-nine to one

The Jelly Piece Song, by Adam McNaughton

https://youtu.be/MMNDwtvAtPg

Anyway, back to the all important Burgh Police Scotland (Act) of 1892. This consolidated the powers of weights and measures in the hands of the Burgh authorities (i.e. the city Corporations in Glasgow or Edinburgh) and they set about enforcing it with some enthusiasm. The cities in particular were quite determined to make sure that the customer was not being diddled by the baker, and that the regulated plain loafs were being sold in the correct 2lb or 4lb sizes only (which was quite a difficult feat for bakers, as the entire process gave loafs of inconsistent size and shape).

The inspectors found that the nominally 2lb plain loaf was varying in size from anywhere between 1lb 6oz to 2lb and therefore it was decided to make examples of those found flouting the regulations, in order to improve consumer confidence at a time of numerous food scandals. In particular they began to crack down on the sale of pan loafs without the legally required weight stamp on them – the inspectors considered pan loafs to be plain bread, as they were in England, under the terms of the 1892 act.

In 1898, the Northern Baking Co. of Tradeston was taken to court for selling 50 rumpy loafs (number 8 in the picture of Scottish fancy breads) – which were considered a standard plain bread in England – without the weight stamp. The baker contended it was fancy bread and didn’t need stamped or to be exactly 2lb. Things came to a head in November of that year, when Peter Dick of Montgomery Street and Union Place in Edinburgh was prosecuted for selling 12 pan loafs not stamped with the imperial weight. Superintendent Moyes of the City Weights & Measures department contended that pan loafs were plain bread, as they were considered as such in England, and as the baker conceded, they used exactly the same bread mixture as the plain loafs, therefore surely were also plain bread?

The baker contended that it was well known in Scotland that pan loafs were fancy bread and had always been sold as such, and customers knew this, therefore did not need to weigh 2lbs and did not need a weight stamp (even if they used exactly the same dough). The defence called witnesses from the Master Bakers incorporations of Partick, Dundee, Edinburgh and other towns, who all corroborated that in Scotland a pan loaf was a fancy bread, and always had been. Sherriff Maconochie, presiding, determined that because the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act gave “no indication at all of what fancy bread was” that the only grounds he could therefore decide on was what was “ordinarily sold to and spoken by of the public“. Maconochie came down on the side of the bakers and therefore on 14th November 1898, the legal precedent was set in Scotland that a pan loaf counted as fancy bread and therefore by extension, the only bread that could legally be considered plain bread was the plain batch loaf.

Not just any Scottish Plain Loaf, this is an M&S Scottish Plain Loaf

Pan loafs were therefore exempt from having to be sold in 2lb or 4lb weights, and need not be stamped as such, and bakers were free to continue to sell them at the same price as their plain loafs, but slightly smaller sized, as they contended they had always done. This had the knock-on effect of making Scottish pan loafs smaller than their English counterparts. In England, they remained as being 2lb, in Scotland they dropped to 1lb 12oz (1.75lb), so bakers could continue to be sell them at the same price as their plain loafs. Now that what constituted plain breid had been decided in law, the populace of Scotland got back to their lives, consuming large quantities of the substance as the basis of their diet. As mentioned earlier, 90% of bread sold in Glasgow was the plain loaf and it was 75% overall in the country.

Prices varied by burgh, being determined by the local incorporation of Master Bakers, with small variations up or down to accommodate for competition or local factors like transport or fuel costs. So long as Scotland could get a good, affordable supply of the higher quality, high gluten, white flour needed to produce the plain loaf, there wouldn’t be a problem. And that flour had to come across the Atlantic from Canada and America. No problem in times of peace and rapidly improving transatlantic shipping. But then something came along that interrupted that vital flour supply – the world went to war in 1914.

By early 1917, the U-boat war in the North Atlantic was biting hard, and the supply of food to the UK from the breadbaskets of Canada and America were perilously threatened. The government had to act. In May 1917, the Minister for Food warned the cabinet that by September, it would be a “difficult problem” to feed the nation.

WW1 bread saving campaign poster; most British flour was imported and this tied up the Navy in needing to undertake convoy escort work, when it could be off fighting the enemy. Art.IWM PST 4470

Firstly, all loafs, whether they be plain, pan or fancy, were standardised as either 2lb or 4lb. In England, a lot of bread was still sold by a standard price and not a standard weight, this was changed to standard weight.

Secondly, the sale of fresh bread was banned. All bread had to be aged at least 12 hours before sale. This was to ensure all bread was stale at point of sale, so people wouldn’t refuse to buy stale bread today over fresh bread tomorrow, cutting down waste. Stale bread was felt to be more healthy, and easier to slice thinner so you could get more slices out of a loaf. More importantly it meant that overnight baking could be stopped, saving the costs and fuel of lighting the industrial bakeries. Most importantly, it was less palatable so people just consumed less of it. It’s much less tempting to overindulge on stale bread, vs. gorging on a warm loaf not long out the oven. It was found this alone reduced bread consumption by 5%, saving on wheat imports.

Thirdly, commercial bakers were obliged to use a standardised flour, to produce a “regulation bread”. Standard Flour had the extraction rate raised from the 70% of white flour (meaning 30% of the grain is not milled, discarded as bran and husk) to 81%. 100% flour would be wholemeal. The regulation flour was also compulsorily adulterated with the flours of non-wheat grains. Maize, potato, barley, oat etc. Legally at least 10% had to be non-wheat flour, and millers at their own discretion could use up to 25%.

Not surprisingly, this all caused problems in Scotland. Scottish bakers had to use 2lb or 4lb English bread pans, rather than the favoured 1lb 12oz pans, resulting in bigger loafs than was the custom. They therefore couldn’t sell it at the same price as plain loafs, and consumption of fancy (pan) bread fell 33%. A far bigger problem was with the flour. Scottish plain loafs needed high-gluten flour and the high-extraction, adulterated flour of WW1 just did not work properly. Millers did not even have to specify the level or type of adulteration either, so each batch of flour was different. So bakers found themselves having to experiment with each new batch of flour until they could alter their process to suit the new flour mix – which inevitably changed in the next batch. They begged the government to mandate millers specify the flour contents. The problem was so severe in 1917 that it was genuinely a cause for concern that the Scottish plain loaf would have to be abolished, and people would have to start eating English-style pan bread!

Contemporary Scotsman editorial on the subject of the plain loaf

A further problem was that given the lower farm and milling hygeine and quality control in wartime and the higher levels of extraction from the wheat grain, flour was more at risk of “rope”. Rope, or Bacillus subtilis, is a bacteria whose spores live in the soil and can infect wheat. Rope spores can survive baking temperatures and the moist, warm interior of freshly baked bread is perfect for them to replicate, feasting off the contents of the loaf. Bread infected with rope has a distinct taste, variously described as silagey or pineappley or vomity (think of the sort of flavours ascribed to Parmesan cheese). Rope bread was barely edible and bad bread was said to be “a bit ropey“; the origin of the English language idiom for something of dubious quality.

Rope spores under the microscope. CC-BY-SA Y tambe

The wartime bread acts, which lasted from 1917-1920 caused a big shift in Scotland away from pan and fancy breads, to the cheaper plain loafs, at the same time as the quality, economy and palatability of those plain loafs decreased dramatically. The law intervened in 1918, and a follow up Bread Order determined that as in Scotland the pan loaf was legally a fancy loaf, Scottish bakers could get an exemption and go back to selling it at 1.75lb sizes so that its cost could be the same as plain bread. If you thought (or hoped!) that was the end of the legal history of plain bread in Scotland, then I’m sorry there are the events of 1926 and 1942 to get through…

With the WW1 Bread Acts, the government didn’t just meddle with bread production to reduce consumption of bread and flour, it also subsidised bread to stop price inflation, by guaranteeing bakers a fixed price per sack of flour and paying the millers the difference. The price of plain bread (be it English or Scottish or Welsh or Irish style) was set at 9d per quartern (4lb) loaf. So even if the bread was rubbish, and you were encouraged to eat less of it, you could still afford it.

The Kitchen is the Key to Victory. Bread control was a wartime weapon. Art.IWM PST 6541

For fancy bread, the bakers could charge cost + profit, so although in England the price of pan bread was fixed and subsidised at 9d (because pan meant plain bread in the English consciousness), in Scotland it was classed as fancy bread so even with the loaf size reduced to 1.75lb it became unaffordable for many.

Although the war ended in 1918, price and bread controls did not until April 1920 when the various Bread Act restrictions were finally ended. The government still controlled the price of flour, but was not subsidising it to guarantee a 9d plain loaf. This caused great anxiety, as with the price cap on flour lifted, inflation (particularly post-war wage and fuel inflation) would catch up with the price of a staple loaf of plain bread and huge price rises were feared. Previous wartime price increases had been capped at 1/2d per 4lb loaf before stabilising at 9d, but the rise in the price of a sack of flour meant it was feared that the price of bread was going to increase by 2 1/2d or 3d in one go – 5 to 6 times more than before.

The Scotsman reported that such a price increase was “unprecedented in the history of the trade“. It warned the public to expect bread to increase in price from 9d to between 1s 1d and 1s 2d (i.e by 4d – 5d) in coming weeks – or 45-55%. When restrictions ended on April 12th 1920, the price of bread did indeed jump – but not by quite that much. Prices were agreed and set locally by Incorporations and Associations of Master Bakers, accounting for local costs like fuel and transport and local wage negotiation.

Prices in Scottish TownsGlasgow Price Advanced 3d

Outside of the cities, the prices were higher, driven by transport costs. In Buckie, the price did hit 1s 2d per quartern loaf, causing local outrage. Housewives in one section of the town took mass civil action and refused to accept the morning rolls, sending them all back.

The Buckie Bread Protest

And again the legal question over what constituted fancy bread in Scotland raised its head. The authorities in Dunblane tried to prosecute two bakers, member of the Scottish Association of Master Bakers, for selling pan loafs that were under weight (i.e. less than 2lb.) The Procurator Fiscal refused to support the prosecution, and instructed the Crown not to proceed. Once again, the might of the Scottish legal establishment had ruled that pan loafs were fancy bread.

The government recognised that returning bread to the free market had undesirable and unforeseen effects on affordability, and as early as 1922 they were looking at reintroducing control with a Sale of Bread Bill. The Sale of Bread Bill wanted to re-introduce the sale of all bread (fancy or plain) by weight rather than price. In Scotland it was the custom to sell fancy bread by price whereas in England this was usually the case for plain bread. Sale by price means that you asked for a specific price of loaf (e.g. 1s) and the baker sold you a loaf that they had baked to that price point. Its weight would vary with the price of flour, labour etc., but the cost stayed the same. Such loafs kept bread affordable, but suffered from “shrinkflation” in that the bakers simply reduced the size of the loafs to account for inflation of ingredient, fuel and labour costs; bread got smaller but the price stayed the same.

This Bill also wanted to fix the weight of all pan loafs at 2lb or 4lb, including those in Scotland – which of course were classed as fancy bread and were sold in 1.75lb weights. This rattled the Scottish bakers, who remembered what happened the last time they had to do this in 1917. The Scottish local authorities supported the classification of pan bread as plain bread, as they felt bakers were using its classification as fancy bread to rip off customers with “underweight” loafs. In Glasgow, the Chief Inspector of Weights & Measures reported his department had made in the year 484 inspections, measuring 3,076 loafs at 47 different bakeries. The weights of plain loafs were found to be “satisfactory”, but pan loafs “most unsatisfactory”.

There were numerous delays to the progress of the Bill, and it rumbled on in parliamentary purgatory for almost 4 years. The Scottish Association of Master Bakers were vigorous in their defence and found support for their cause with the Earl of Elgin in the Lords.

Edward James Bruce, 10th Earl of Elgin and 14th Earl of Kincardine. © National Portrait Gallery, London

Elgin spoke up for the SAMB in the Lords, and pushed their amendment that in Scotland a pan loaf would be sold in 1.75lb weights, would still be a fancy bread but offering the concession that they would stamp the weight on the baking tins. The bakers contended that in Scotland they were not equipped for the mass production of 2lb and 4lb pan loafs, and that it would be uneconomic to produce them vs. 2lb and 4lb plain loafs without the wartime subsidies. The bakers were supported by the Cooperatives. Debating the “problem of the Fancy Loaf” in the Lords, Elgin went on the record to say that the Scottish plain loaf was “the national loaf“, “was of vital importance to Scotland” and the bill as it stood was “an injustice to Scotland“.

Following Elgin’s intervention it was finally agreed at the end of July that in Scotland, the pan loaf was exempted from being 2lb or 4lb, and could be sold in 1.75lb sizes so long as it was clearly marked (curiously, 1.75lb is ~800g; the size of a standard modern loaf that was agreed when bread went metric). This came too late for baker George Walker of Coldstream, who in April had been charged with selling bread “deficient in weight and failing to carry scales“. He had gone to sell bread in nearby English villages where his fancy pan loafs magically became plain bread as soon as he crossed the border. His “but in Scotland” defence of pan being fancy bread carried no weight with the English magistrate and he was fined £1 for failing to carry scales and £5 for selling pan bread deficient in weight. The bill passed as the Sale of Food (Weights and Measures) Act 1926 and people once again got back to their lives and eating their plain bread.

Toasted, buttered plain bread © Farmersgirlkitchen

Plain bread returned to the Scottish news agenda in 1934, when poor wheat crops in America pushed up the flour price and the price of a 4lb plain loaf in Aberdeen to 9½d – meaning the commonly bought 2lb loaf was 4¾d. A supply of farthings (1/4 pennies) had to be sent to the Granite city to cope.

The final chapter (phew!) in the plain bread story takes us to WW2. Once again the government guaranteed the price and supply of flour and again mandated increased wheat extraction by millers from the grain. The National Wheatmeal was 85% extraction (70% = white, 100% = wholemeal). The higher extraction of wheat than in WW1 (which had an extraction of 81% for standard flour) was possible with better milling technology, and meant that there was no debasing of the flour with potato starch or other grains and much less likelihood of Rope being a problem. Once again, the government also launched campaigns to reduce bread consumption, but didn’t force stale bread on people like they had in WW1 .

WW2 bread awareness campaign poster

You may be familiar with the concept of the WW2 “national loaf.” This was not actually a standard type of bread – it was any plain bread that was baked with the national wheatmeal flour, so in Scotland it was a plain loaf batch baked in a box and in England a pan loaf baked individually in a pan, etc. A problem arose in Scotland in 1942 when it was found that there was excessive bread wastage when compared to England. Bakers were baking bread, but not all of it was selling, and too much was going stale (a Scottish plain loaf goes stale quicker) and being sent for pig food. Such was the magnitude of the issue, that Lord Woolton (of Pie), the Minister of Food, was sent to Scotland to investigate and find a solution.

Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Dutch National Archives

What Woolton found was that picky Scottish housewives were refusing to buy the “sider” and “ender” loafs – that is those that were touching the sides and ends of the batch baking box and where a side and end crust formed from contact with the hot metal in the oven (see the photos earlier in this thread). This was a peculiarly Scottish issue, not the case with English pan loafs. Woolton appealed directly to the customer; “I appeal to Scottish housewives to take their bread as it comes. Waste of bread means waste of lives“.

Woolton’s appeal to Scottish housewives, 12 May 1942

Woolton had a point – wheat had to come across the Atlantic from America and Canada and ships were being sunk and lives being lost in this undertaking at a terrible and unsustainable rate. It was estimated as much as 5% of Scottish plain bread production was being wasted. The national importance of the plain loaf was recognised, and even though pan loafs were better with the national wheatmeal flour, they were less efficient to produce. The prospect of selling the sider and ender loafs at a discount (they were often mis-shapen) was entertained

It was noted that the loaf was of vital important for “workmen’s sandwiches” – A Scottish miner or workie would go nowhere without his “piece tin”, specially shaped to accommodate the tall slices of a plain loaf.

https://twitter.com/NatMiningMuseum/status/1317027503651737600?s=20u0026amp;t=HjPomqxhZ-FWuNjy8O9z6w

Woolton’s appeal obviously had the desired effect as the issue did not reappear in the news agenda after May 1942. And so the populace of Scotland got on with eating (or enduring) their national plain loafs, be they sider loafs or ender loafs or otherwise.

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