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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.

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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