Congratulations on winning the Guild of Food Writers Best Newcomer award recently. What does it mean to you?
I wasn’t expecting it at all. I didn’t think the judges would respond to an essay about the cultural importance of Glasgow morning rolls! For them to see value in my work and celebrate a piece of writing specific to the West of Scotland felt like a big win.
Everyone knows you as The Tenement Kitchen – where did the name come from?
When I was a kid, I always thought my aunt’s flat was so fancy; she lived on the top floor of a tenement that had two reception rooms. When I returned to Paisley in 2017, I moved to the same street in the same tenement block. I had very little understanding of the history of tenements and the blog name was supposed to convey the glamorous life of tenement living with fresh produce and classic Scottish recipes with a twist.
As I began to investigate working-class history, Tenement Kitchen became a metaphor for my writing, recognising the value of authentic working-class Scottish food and stories.
Tell us something we might not know about the Glasgow morning roll
Records show us that ‘reidy baps’ have been a crucial part of city life since the 1600s. Their size and versatility made them an instant bestseller with working men who wanted to pick up a light travelling lunch.
The rolls have had four centuries of development and the fillings show the excellence in Scottish butchery.
Why is food heritage so important to you?
When I started researching, I kept discovering things that challenged my view of Scottish food. For example, we have been using cumin in Scottish cooking longer than potatoes; scones were invented in Scotland; Christmas baking was illegal in Scotland for 100 years; the word ‘piece’ for a sandwich comes from people splitting a morning Bannock with one piece for breakfast and one piece for lunch and people used to be prescribed sugar pills for energy and recovery, hence the name ‘tablet’ for this well-known Scottish confection.
For most of my childhood, my family lived below the poverty line. Dinners were potato heavy and food insecurity was a constant concern. It was very clear from the world around me that the food we ate was something to be ashamed of. I never saw mince and dough balls on television cooking shows or Lorne sausages in mainstream cookery books.
I think we need to shout about all our food, even the plain fare. For me, food history gives us the roadmap to celebrate our food from the pizza crunch to the humble dough ball. I feel like I’m beginning to contribute to that by sharing my food history revelations, wrapped in a good dose of storytelling.
What’s the one thing that we can all do to protect Scotland’s food heritage?
Working-class food has gone undocumented for centuries. We rely on sources like poetry, novels and burgh laws to paint a picture of what working-class people ate in this country. It wasn’t until the 20th century that we saw publications like the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute cookery books and the works of Florence Marian McNeill make the first real effort to detail the recipes and regional variations in everyday Scottish food.
Even then, there are recipes that my granny made that I had never heard of such as Coburg Cakes, Bunty Creams and Skirlie. In one generation, food can go from pedestrian to extinct. There are bound to be recipes that we’ve already lost because no one wrote them down.
We need a national concerted effort to collect food stories so that future generations understand what their inherited food culture is. Until then, our job is to talk about our food. Interview your grandparents, your parents, and your siblings. Ask them about their food memories and preserve family recipes with their memories.
@tenementkitchen
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