Atholl Brose: Oats, Honey, Whisky and a Captured Rebel

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 1475 story is a legend without contemporary evidence. The forfeiture of the Lord of the Isles in 1475 is historical, but the well-spiking story is not documented. The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen (1929), says only that Atholl brose "emerges from the Highland mists in the year 1475, but may well be much older", and leaves the legends to her later book The Scots Cellar. Her recipes and her record of how the drink was used are good evidence for the twentieth century; the 1475 date rests on the legend.

The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) repeats the legend but frames it as a story that "suggests an early origin", not as history. It names the hero as the Duke of Atholl. Retellings often do the same, but there was no Duke of Atholl until 1703, so this card keeps "Earl".

Making Atholl brose

established To make Atholl brose, oatmeal is soaked in water, then squeezed and strained to produce a creamy liquid, the brose. This is mixed with heather honey and whisky, and often with cream, stirred well and bottled. It is served in small glasses.

established The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen (1929), gives two versions. The first, headed "The Duke of Atholl's Recipe", mixes oatmeal with cold water to a thick paste, leaves it half an hour, presses it through a fine strainer and discards the meal, keeping only the creamy liquor. Honey and this liquor are shaken in a quart bottle filled up with whisky. The second, from a Williamina Macrae, whips double cream and folds in lightly toasted oatmeal, heather honey and whisky, served in shallow glasses. The first is the drink; the second is the dessert form close to cranachan.

established Stevenson's own description in Kidnapped (1886), quoted by the food historian Annette Hope in A Caledonian Feast (1987), is "old whisky, strained honey, and sweet cream slowly beaten together in the right order and proportion". Hope points out that he left out the oatmeal, which many think essential, and put in cream, which strictly turns the drink into gromach, a dish to be eaten with a spoon rather than bottled and drunk at Hogmanay. She prints two versions from G. W. Lockhart's The Scot and His Oats. For an aperitif, pinhead oatmeal is soaked overnight, the liquor is drained off and sweetened with honey, an equal amount of whisky is added, and a little of the soaked oatmeal goes into each glass. For a dessert, a tablespoon of lightly toasted pinhead oatmeal is mixed with a tablespoon of honey and two of whisky, then folded into a pint of stiffly beaten cream. Her glossary defines Atholl brose simply as a drink of oatmeal, honey and whisky.

What brose means

established In ordinary Scottish cooking brose is not strained at all. McNeill's basic brose is two handfuls of oatmeal in a bowl with salt and a piece of butter, with boiling water poured over and stirred roughly with the handle of a horn spoon so that it forms knots, the meal staying raw inside them; it was supped with buttermilk or sweet milk. She calls it "the backbone of many a sturdy Scotsman". Brose could be made with the liquor of almost anything: fat brose with the fatty broth of an ox head or shin, kail brose with kail added, neep brose with turnip bree in Aberdeenshire, mussel brose on the Forth shore, and milk brose (madlocks in Renfrewshire). Scott, as quoted by McNeill, says that in olden times everyone, "gentle and simple", had fat brose on Yule morning.

established The local names McNeill collects show how common it was: blind or water brose had no butter, and so none of the "eyes" butter makes on the surface; aigar brose used mixed meal, which beggars were said to get when they put different kinds of alms into one bag; and "knotty tams" was a cant name for brose in general. Brose was also a byword for plain Lowland fare: a Gaelic poem on Killiecrankie, quoted by T. F. Henderson and McNeill, mocks the defeated government soldiers as "men of kail and brose". McNeill also records that "the original Athole Brose" was simply meal and whisky, which places the drink in the same family as crowdie and meal-and-ale, raw meal stirred into a liquid. Annette Hope gives a real-life parallel: the Highland poacher Alexander Davidson (1792–1843) is said to have lived chiefly on oatmeal soaked in whisky and rolled into sausage-shaped patties.

established Hope also explains the old meaning of crowdie, the dish from which cranachan descends. Before it meant a soft cheese, crowdie was sour milk or buttermilk stirred into raw oatmeal to the thickness of soft porridge, a cooling summer breakfast in place of brose.

established Brose and porridge. The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) calls brose one of the most basic words in the vocabulary of Scottish cooks. Its definition draws the key line: brose differs from porridge because the oatmeal is not cooked. Depending on what was to hand, brose could be made with barley meal, with peasemeal (pease brose), or with mixtures of meals, including bere meal from the old northern barley. The Companion adds green brose, made in spring with young nettle tops or spring onions, to the kail and neep broses that McNeill describes. Atholl brose is the one member of the family that became a drink.

established A family of creamy restoratives. The Companion's entry on alcohol in cookery places brose and cranachan beside syllabub, trifle, zabaglione and egg nog: creamy dishes laced with spirits or fortified wine, many descended from the possets of sixteenth-century England, with a long history as restoratives. Seen this way, the creamed Atholl brose of McNeill's second recipe is a Scottish member of a wide European group, made with the local spirit and the local honey.

established Heather honey. Heather honey, the usual sweetener, is unusual. The Companion's entry on honey notes that honey from heather (Calluna vulgaris) has so much gum in it that it is almost a jelly and will not pour.

shared Cranachan. The Companion says cranachan was originally a harvest festival version of crowdie, an oatmeal gruel, with coarser meal and cream instead of water or buttermilk, and that it became prominent as a dessert only in the later twentieth century. Whisky, in its account, belongs mainly to restaurant versions. The dessert form of Atholl brose and modern cranachan have therefore converged from two directions: one a drink thickened with cream, the other a harvest dish given whisky.

The legend

traditional According to tradition, in 1475 the Earl of Atholl was ordered to deal with a rebel Highland chief, often identified as Iain MacDonald, Lord of the Isles. Learning that the rebel drank from a particular well, the Earl filled it with honey, whisky and oatmeal. The rebel drank deeply, became drunk and was easily captured.

established In reality, John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, was forfeited by James III in 1475 for treason, and submitted in 1476. There is no historical record of the well story.

Regiments and celebrations

established Atholl brose is associated with the Atholl Highlanders, the Duke of Atholl's ceremonial private army, and is served at Highland regiment dinners and at Hogmanay.

established McNeill describes it as a favourite treat for first-footers in the Highlands and for toasting the New Year in the Highland regiments, and lists it among the Hogmanay fare in her calendar of festival dishes. She records that the Duke of Atholl served it to the dramatist Sheridan at Blair Castle, who "partook of rather freely", and that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert tried it at Blair Atholl in September 1844. She also quotes the couplet "Aye since he wore the tartan trews / He dearly lo'ed the Atholl Brose", which she attributes to the Atholl fiddler Niel Gow.

established In the Outer Isles, McNeill says, Atholl brose made strong and very hot was called stapag and was drunk to relax after a long day at sea or on the hill. Elsewhere she uses stapag for a cold mixture of meal and water, so the name seems to have covered more than one oatmeal mixture.

Variations

shared Some recipes make Atholl brose as a dessert, with cream, oatmeal, honey and whisky whipped together, close to cranachan. Others use only oatmeal water, honey and whisky.

• Atholl brose is made from strained oatmeal water.
• It includes heather honey and whisky.
• Legend says it was used to capture a rebel in 1475.
• The Atholl Highlanders are associated with it.
• It is drunk at Hogmanay.
• Ordinary brose is raw oatmeal stirred into boiling water so that it forms knots; the meal stays raw inside.
• Brose without butter was called blind brose, because it had no "eyes" of fat on top.
• McNeill records that Sheridan drank Atholl brose "rather freely" at Blair Castle.
• Brose differs from porridge because the oatmeal is never cooked.
• Green brose was made in spring with young nettle tops.
• Heather honey is so gummy it will barely pour.
• Many retellings give the 1475 hero as a Duke of Atholl, but the dukedom dates from 1703.

• Disputed: The 1475 well story. The forfeiture of the Lord of the Isles in 1475 is historical, but there is no record of the well story. McNeill's remark that the drink "emerges from the Highland mists in the year 1475" rests on the legend, so it is not independent evidence of the drink's age.
• Myth: The 1475 hero was a Duke of Atholl. Many retellings, including The Oxford Companion to Food, say Duke. The title in 1475 was Earl; the dukedom was created in 1703.
• Myth: Brose is strained oatmeal water. Ordinary brose is raw oatmeal with boiling water, stock or milk poured over it and stirred into knots, and it is not strained. Strained oatmeal liquor is particular to the Atholl brose drink.
• Disputed: Stevenson's recipe in Kidnapped. He gave whisky, honey and cream and left out the oatmeal. With cream and no oatmeal liquor it is strictly gromach, a dish eaten with a spoon, not the standard drink.