Would you like puffin with that?

Sue Lawrence, whose latest book, A Cook's Tour of Scotland, has just been published, selects highlights from it

When I read about the St Kildans' tradition of boiling a puffin in with their oats to flavour their porridge, I was fascinated.

Having been brought up on porridge cooked with nothing more than oats and salt, I wondered how it might taste and whether or not this unusual cooking method was perpetuated once this most westerly and remote of Hebridean islands was evacuated in 1930.

All sorts of seabirds were harvested there over the centuries, for their oil, feathers and flesh. In An Isle called Hirte, author Mary Harman records a visitor to the islands in 1842 enjoying “a meal consisting of fulmar, auk, guillemot, one of each, boiled; two puffins, roasted; barley cakes, ewecheese and milk; and by way of dessert, raw dulse and roasted limpets.” (Some dessert!) But I was keen to discover if, since 1930 and the end of St Kildan community, there was anywhere else in Scotland where such “delicacies” were still consumed?

Atrip to the island of Lewis where some of the 36 St Kildan evacuees ended up, made me aware puffin consumption took place not only on St Kilda. In the Lochs area of Lewis, south of Stornoway, it was a delicacy enjoyed by many until the 1960s.

On Tiree, I discovered from fisherman Iain Macdonald that cormorant was a staple of islanders there until the 1970s. And of course there is the famous Hebridean delicacy of guga or baby gannet.

In the interest of research for this book, not only have I driven, flown and sailed hundreds of miles across Scotland, mainl...

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• By : Sue Lawrence
• In : Food
• Issue : 28
• Page : 48
• Words : 1,079