Aberdeen Butteries: The North-East's Salty Rowie

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The buttery's construction and regional popularity are well established. Its origins, including the fishermen story, are not documented. The main older printed source used here is the folklorist F. Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen (1929; revised 1963). Her recipe and the street cry she records are good evidence that the buttery rowie was an established Aberdeen bread by her time; the medieval origin offered by her baker correspondent is a craftsman's belief, not evidence. Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, ed. Tom Jaine, 2014) is used as a reference check on the buttery's description and on related breads; it says nothing about the buttery's date of origin or the fishermen story.

Making a buttery

established A buttery is made from a yeasted wheat dough. A mixture of butter and lard is spread over the dough, which is folded and rolled several times to create layers, like puff or croissant pastry. The dough is then cut and shaped into flat, irregular rounds, proved and baked until crisp outside and soft and flaky inside. Plenty of salt gives the buttery its characteristic flavour.

established The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen, gives the method as it was taught in her day. A yeast dough is risen to twice its bulk, ideally chilled, then rolled into a strip three times as long as it is wide. Butter and lard, beaten together and divided into three, are dotted over it a third at a time, and the dough is folded in three and rolled as for flaky pastry, three times in all with a rest in a cool place between. It is then cut into ovals, proved again and baked in a fairly hot oven. Her Forres correspondent added that roast dripping was sometimes used and made "a most flavoursome roll".

Rowies

established In the north-east, butteries are often called rowies or simply rolls. They are bought fresh from bakers in the morning and eaten warm, often split and spread with butter, jam or marmalade.

established McNeill records the old Aberdeen street cry "Bawbee baps and buttery rowies!" A bawbee was a halfpenny, and the bap was Scotland's soft morning roll, so the cry paired the two breakfast breads of the town. She also gives Aberdeen softies, soft buns of baker's dough enriched with butter and a little sugar, a plainer relation of the buttery. The street cry is undated.

A laminated roll among others

established The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) treats the buttery as a regional roll rather than a pastry. Its entry on rolls, which is unsigned and so by Alan Davidson, gives the names Aberdeen rowies, Aberdeen butteries and butterie rowies, and explains that the rolls are enriched with butter "by a process of rolling and folding similar to that employed for making croissants". It describes the shape as roughly oval, which matches McNeill's instruction to cut the dough into ovals, and says they are eaten warm, usually at breakfast, with butter and marmalade.

established The closest British parallel in the Companion is the English lardy cake, a country tea bread made from bread dough enriched with lard, sugar and often spices and dried fruit, then rolled and folded several times to give a layered texture. The Companion notes that such enriched breads were made from dough left over from a large bake, and that their high fat content kept them from drying out. The buttery shares the technique and the keeping quality, but it is salted rather than sweetened.

established The bap, the buttery's partner in the old street cry, has its own Companion entry, signed by Laura Mason. Quoting McNeill, it calls the bap "the traditional morning roll of Scotland", notes that the word has been in use since the late 16th century and is of unknown derivation, and adds that in Scotland baps are never sweetened.

shared The Companion also records that in the north-east of Scotland "soft biscuits" are flat buns made from bread dough kneaded with butter and sugar, close kin to McNeill's Aberdeen softies. Laura Mason, who signs the entry on biscuits, suggests this usage is possibly the origin of the North American habit of calling scones biscuits. She offers this as a possibility, not a finding.

An old method?

traditional A Forres baker wrote to McNeill that "the buttery is really one of the 'mysteries' of medieval days", a by-product of the old overnight sponge method, in which dough was set to ferment slowly overnight. A baker using leftover fermented dough and spare fat to make a rich roll is a plausible origin, but no medieval or early modern source naming the buttery has been found, and the claim should be treated as trade tradition.

shared The food historian Annette Hope, in A Caledonian Feast (1987), was no surer. She noted that many writers had compared the buttery's texture to the croissant's, and left open how and when the method reached Scotland and why it became an Aberdeen speciality, calling these "questions yet unanswered". Her home recipe differs from McNeill's in its balance of fats: three parts butter to one of lard, with some of the butter rubbed into the flour and the rest beaten with the lard and spread over the dough in two turns. The dough is cut into squares and the corners folded to the centre to make rough rounds, which explains the irregular shape of many bakers' butteries. She recommended eating them split while still warm and filled with raspberry or cherry jam, with no extra butter.

For the fishermen?

traditional A popular explanation for the buttery's richness is that it was developed for Aberdeen's fishermen, who needed bread that would keep for days at sea and give them energy. The high fat content would help the rolls keep. The story is plausible and widely told, but no historical source confirms it.

A north-east icon

established The buttery is a symbol of north-east identity, sold in bakers, supermarkets and cafés. In recent years bakers elsewhere have taken it up, and it has attracted attention from food writers.

• A buttery is also called a rowie.
• Butteries are made with butter and lard.
• They are sometimes compared to a flattened croissant.
• The fishermen story is plausible but undocumented.
• Butteries are best eaten warm.
• Aberdeen street sellers once cried "Bawbee baps and buttery rowies!", a bawbee being a halfpenny.
• McNeill's recipe uses equal weights of butter and lard.
• Some bakers once used roast dripping in place of part of the fat.
• The Oxford Companion to Food files the buttery under rolls, not pastries, and compares its folding to croissant-making.
• The word "bap" has been in use since the late 16th century, but nobody knows where it comes from.

• Disputed: The buttery was made for fishermen. The high fat content would help the rolls keep at sea, so the story is plausible and widely told, but no historical source confirms it.
• Disputed: The buttery is a medieval bread. This rests on one Forres baker's letter to F. Marian McNeill, linking it to the old overnight sponge method. It is a craftsman's belief; no medieval or early modern source naming the buttery has been found.