Archive in a Pandemic A-Z: R is for...

 RESTORATIVES

We are quite late with this installation of Archive In A Pandemic and it is probably because this stage of the pandemic has been exhausting us a little and we are still short staffed after the retirement of The Fonds.

We were in need of a restorative and found one in the archives today in the Watt of Breckness and Skaill collection. This document written on January 3rd 1737 is a letter from Thomas Baikie, Kirkwall to his son. He begins the letter with his sorrow that his son and wife have been ill and proceeds to share the recipe for a restorative 'if you be troubled with a cough and fear a decay'.

We could read most of the ingredients, but some of the words stumped us a little (highlighted below), so do please help us out if you can and then we can all brew up lovely restorative potions against cough and decay...

Orkney Archive Reference D3/386 - click to enlarge

To make the tincture, Thomas advised his son to take 'a chapin (about a half-pint) of brandy, 4 ounces of pepper, 1/2 ounce of  ___?____ , 1/2 ounce of cinamon, a handful of jags (thorns), a handful of the tops of spearmint, and a handful of the tops of wormwood.'

The method he gives is to 'braise the spices, cut the herbs, infuse them into the brandie, put into an earthen bottle, which will contain honie ____?______ 

This mixture was to be gently heated, 'till by the godes you bring it to a little boil',  left for 24 hours and then half a spoonful taken with milk in the morning or 3 or 4 drops in a dram of whisky.

You may find wormwood and earthen bottles hard to come by so we could conceivably replace the cinnamon and honey mixture with cinnamon buns and just have it with brandy or whisky. Can't hurt.

Orkney Archive Advent Calendar - Eyes On The Pies

If you have not yet baked your Christmas cake, Pudding or Mince Pies (tsk, tsk) then you could follow the recipes donated to the King Street Church sale of work in 1938.


As always in recipe books from yore, there are some slightly stomach churning contributions. Sheep kidney soup or 'meat shape' anyone?

Ma Master Chef

Are you a mum? Do you cook traditional Orkney fare for your family? Do you like the idea of two hairy men plus a camera crew filming you as you prepare food in your kitchen? Then you are in luck: the Hairy Bikers are coming to Orkney as part of their new series, Mum Knows Best, and they want to find out about traditional, every day Orkney cooking.

If you fancy taking part, or you know a mum who is handy in the kitchen, then click here for more information.

We had a look through our catalogue to see if we had any mum-style recipes and found this great cook book written by Jemima Wilson c.1949. It is filled with fantastic Enid Blyton style dishes such as Roly Poly Pudding, Rock Cakes, Fruit Tart, English Stew, Queen of Bread Pudding and Toad In The Hole.

Jemima also provides basic recipes for scrambled and poached eggs, different styles of pastries and various types of scones. Her explanations are very precise and some recipes take up several pages. One of the simplest is for Wheaten Meal Scones:

Wheaten Meal Scones

3 Tablespoons Flour

2 Tablespoons wheaten meal

1 ounce butter

1/4 teaspoonful soda

1/2 teaspoonful cream of tartar

pinch of salt

sweet milk

Prepare the dough in the usual way, flour the board, knead lightly and roll out the dough about 1/4 thick. Place on a greased oven tray mark in four with a knife, brush over with egg and bake in a fairly hot oven for 7 to 10 minutes. Cool on a wire tray and serve on a plate.

I have not included the most unusual recipe, that for egg jelly, mainly because it sounds totally gross, and I didn't want to get pesky vomit on my computer.

A Book Full of Recipes For People You Hate.

Pictured above is 'Academic Appetisers', a Kirkwall Grammar School publication which was presumably part of some fund-raising in 1975. Within, various Kirkwall teachers provide recipes ranging from basic Christmas cake and stuffed peppers to Cold Chicken Curry which calls for both peach jam and mayonnaise. Mmm, that classic combination.

Winner of the of Most Disturbing Recipe Award is the 'Savoury Supper Dish', which involves layers of corned beef or tinned salmon, tomatoes, canned spaghetti hoops and onion in a dish, white sauce over the lot, baked in a medium oven for half an hour.

We can only hope that this teacher was just writing down random ingredients for a hilarious laugh.

There is also a recipe for salad cream, a vile substance which should be made illegal. Why would you want to make it? It dries clear....

The Darling Buds

It was tough to decide what to commemorate today. Should it be St Patrick's day? The birthday of the incomparable Clare Grogan? The feast day of St Gertrude of Nevelles?

All the customers and staff have been talking about Spring today; how it is FINALLY here after a particularly cold winter and how lovely it is to see snowdrops, crocuses and the leaves of tulips and daffodils popping up all over Orkney.

F. Marian McNeill's Green Dumplings recipe is to be made only at this time of year. Make dumplings following your usual recipe, then add a touch of spring:

"Pick the green buds of hawthorn, the succulent tips of nettles, grass, and other green things - remember that in this condition nothing is poisonous. Include dandelions, leaves, daisy stems, shoots of young corn, and turnip tops, or anything that tastes sweet and harmless. Wash and chop finely and work into the dough until it is green through and through. Form into balls - small ones (one inch across) for soups, and larger for stews and meats. They go with almost anything, and play the part of a salad in wholsomeness."

I hasten to add a disclaimer to the 'nothing is poisonous' bit and the idea of dumplings being a substitute for salad is clearly absurd but this recipe is very appealing otherwise.

Recipe from 'Recipes From Scotland' by F. Marian McNeill

How Could I Forget A Day Dedicated To Cakes???!!

It is Shrove Tuesday as well of course. I wonder if John Mac's mum makes him a birthday cake out of a big pile of pancakes?

See below a recipe for 'Saucer Pancakes' taken from F. Marian McNeill's book 'Recipes From Scotland.' McNeill was included in our exhibition on Famous Orcadian Women.

Born in Holm in 1885 and educated in Glasgow, Florence Marian became a journalist and contributed to the Scottish National Dictionary. Her best known work is 'The Silver Bough', a 4 volume work on Scottish folklore. She was active in the Suffragette movement and wrote several books on cookery.

Saucer Pancakes

2 oz. Flour 2 eggs

11/2 oz. Butter 1/2 pint Milk

1 teaspoonful Castor Sugar Jam (Apricot or preference)

Sift the flour. Beat the eggs. Cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then the flour and milk alternately. Mix lightly, and pour into six buttered saucers. Bake in a hot oven for twenty minutes. Heat some jam. Turn out the pancakes, place some jam on half of each, and double up. Serve immediately.

Scary Biscuits

Biscuits are important in a work place. They make or break both tea-breaks and reputations. Woe betide those staff members who do not bring in their share, but pity even more those who bring in biscuits that are not up to scratch.


A certain well-meaning but ultimately misguided staff member brought some very promising looking chocolate sandwich-type specimens in today. They did not taste good. One by one hands reached, mouths chewed, eyes narrowed and angry insults flew. Even tea did nothing to remedy their tasteless, mealy dryness.

To put this catastrophe into context, we looked out an old recipe book from 1712 as you can usually rely upon old recipes sounding horrific. It all sounds okay though. Many more herbs and spices were being used than I would have guessed; cloves, mace, nutmeg, ginger, sage and thyme all make an appearance, and although there are many instructions to 'boyle' things until they fall apart or until you have lost the will to live, and there are recipes involving skinned cod's heads and non-specific 'shoulders', it all ends up sounding reasonably tasty.

I probably won't try the Colour A Pigg recipe anytime soon however.

Recipe book reference D14/7/1 dated circa 1714.