Soor Plooms: Galashiels's Sour Sweet and a Border Legend

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 motto and coat of arms are documented. The 1337 skirmish is local legend without contemporary evidence. When the sweet was first made is not known. The folklorist F. Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen (1929; second edition 1963) is the earliest description of the sweet consulted for this card. Her account of the sweet is good evidence for her time; her date for the legend differs from the town's.

Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, ed. Tom Jaine, 2014) is used for the wider Scottish sweetie tradition and for the technique of sugar boiling. Its entry on sweeties is unsigned and draws on Jenny Carter and Janet Rae's Chambers Scottish Food Book (1989) and on descriptions by Catherine Brown (1981). Its entries on sugar boiling and pulled candy are by Laura Mason, a historian of British confectionery. The Companion's sweet histories, such as the stories behind Hawick balls and Jeddart snails, are local traditions reported by those authors and are labelled accordingly.

The sweet

established Soor plooms are hard boiled sweets, small and round, coloured bright green and flavoured with a sharp, sour fruit taste. They were traditionally sold loose from glass jars in sweet shops, weighed by the quarter pound.

established McNeill describes them as "ball-shaped, and of a pale clear green colour", with "a refreshing, slightly acid flavour". Her "pale clear" green is gentler than the vivid green of most modern soor plooms, which may reflect a change in colourings or simply differences between makers. She gives no recipe; they were a shop sweet, not a home one.

established Catherine Brown's description, quoted in The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014), agrees: soor plooms "are round, green balls with, as their name suggests, an acid, astringent tang". The Companion repeats the legend only in general terms, saying the plooms are said to commemorate an incident in which English marauders were surprised and overcome while eating unripe plums. It names neither Galashiels nor a year.

How a boiled sweet is made

established Laura Mason's entry on sugar boiling in the Companion explains the craft behind sweets of this kind. Sugar is dissolved in water and boiled; as water is driven off, the syrup gets hotter and more concentrated. Stopping at different temperatures and cooling gives different textures. In their simplest form, boiled sweets are syrup taken to the hard-crack stage (149–154 °C), with flavour and colour added, poured onto a cold surface and shaped. Barley sugar and acid drops are the classic examples, and soor plooms, small, clear, sharp-flavoured and hard, belong with them.

established Acid matters to the chemistry as well as the taste. Mason explains that when sucrose is heated it partly breaks down, or "inverts", into dextrose and fructose. The mixture of different-sized sugar molecules interferes with crystal formation, which keeps a boiled sweet clear and glassy instead of grainy. Acids, such as cream of tartar or the natural acids in fruit, speed this inversion, and modern makers also add glucose for the same purpose. A sour sweet therefore uses acid both to make the mouth pucker and to keep the sweet clear.

established The old test for the stage needs no thermometer. A little syrup is dropped into iced water and then bent; at hard crack it snaps easily, has a yellowish tinge and no longer feels sticky. Thermometers for sugar boiling only came into use in the late 19th century, so earlier sweet-makers relied entirely on such tests.

established Mason traces the knowledge further back. The word "candy" comes from Sanskrit khanda through Arabic qand. By the late 14th century references to penides, a barley-sugar type of sweet, show that sugar boiling was known in England, and by the early 17th century it was explained in cookery books and confectionery manuals. Because sugar was dear and the skill was specialised, confectionery stayed expensive through the 17th and 18th centuries.

A family of local sweets

established McNeill places soor plooms among the local specialities of Scottish sweet-making: Jedburgh's "Jeddart snails", Berwick cockles, Coltart's aniseed candy from Melrose, Brechin's starrie rock, Hawick balls, Moffat whirlies and Edinburgh rock. She explains the Scots' famous sweet tooth by the West of Scotland sugar-refining industry, centred on Greenock from the late seventeenth century, and describes the village sweetie-shop and the travelling candyman of country fairs. In her words, "many localities had their own speciality, some of which achieved national fame."

established The Oxford Companion to Food's entry on sweeties covers the same ground with more history. "Sweeties" is the general Scottish word for boiled sweets, toffees and the like, and the Companion says Scots have indulged in them since the 15th century, when sugar began to arrive in quantity. Laura Mason's entry on sweets adds that "sweeties" is the diminutive of "sweets", roughly the French bonbons and the American "candy". Citing Carter and Rae, the Companion records that the first manufacturing confectioner in Edinburgh was an Italian licensed in 1665 to make "confeits", that Glasgow's confectioners multiplied once it became a sugar-refining centre, and that "sweetie wives" who made their own sweets were a familiar sight in both cities' streets and markets.

shared The Companion singles out the Borders. For some reason, it says, the Border towns showed particular skill in making sweeties, and some of the most familiar sweets originated there in the 19th century, often made by women in their own shops. Its examples, with their stories as local tradition reports them:

Hawick balls. Dark brown peppermint boilings with a hint of cinnamon, once called taffy rock bools. By local tradition they were introduced by two women, Jessie McVittie and Aggie Lamb. Jessie is said to have made them in her shop in Drumlanrig Square in the 1850s, hanging the mixture on a nail in the wall and pulling it again each time it slid towards the floor.

Jeddart snails. Dark brown, mildly peppermint toffees from Jedburgh, whose name and shape are said to have been given by a French prisoner of war who made them for a Jedburgh baker in Napoleon's time.

Berwick cockles. Originally home-made, white with pink stripes, peppermint-flavoured and shaped like the cockle shells fished near Tweedmouth harbour, now made commercially.

Moffat toffee. A hard, amber and gold striped toffee with a tang, made by one Moffat family for generations.

shared Among sweeties from elsewhere, the Companion lists cheugh jeans (chewy sweets made by Ball Allan, "The Candy King of Glasgow", in the later 19th century), Glasgow toffee, Helensburgh toffee, curly andra (a white, coral-like sweet around a coriander seed, its name a corruption of "curryander") and black man, a Kilmarnock treacle sweet remembered by one of McNeill's correspondents. Soor plooms stand out in this list as one of the few that is sour rather than sweet or minty.

The legend of 1337

traditional According to Galashiels tradition, during the Wars of Independence in 1337, a party of English soldiers raiding the Borders stopped near the town and ate wild plums, which were still unripe and sour. Local men surprised them and killed them, and the place became known as the Englishman's Syke. The town took "Soor Plooms" as its motto in memory of the event.

shared McNeill tells the same story with a different date, 1377, and has the raiders "surprised and routed by the braw lads of Gala Water" while eating the unripe plums "in which the district abounded". The town's own tradition and most modern accounts give 1337. Since neither date rests on a contemporary record, the difference cannot be settled; 1337 is used here as the established local form. McNeill's phrase is the earliest link found here between the sweet itself and the legend: she says the plooms "commemorate" the incident.

Coat of arms

established Galashiels's coat of arms shows a plum tree with two foxes reaching for the fruit, and the motto "Soor Plooms". The foxes are said to refer to Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes, reinforcing the idea of sour fruit.

The Braw Lads' Gathering

established The Braw Lads' Gathering, held each summer since 1930, celebrates Galashiels's history, including the 1337 legend, with ride-outs and ceremonies.

• Galashiels's motto is "Soor Plooms".
• The town's coat of arms shows foxes reaching for plums.
• The legend dates to 1337.
• Soor plooms were sold loose from jars.
• The Braw Lads' Gathering began in 1930.
• McNeill described them as "pale clear green".
• Scotland's sweet tooth has been blamed on Greenock's sugar refineries.
• A soor ploom is boiled hotter than tablet or Edinburgh rock, to the hard-crack stage.
• The word "candy" goes back through Arabic to Sanskrit.
• Hawick balls were supposedly pulled on a nail in a shop wall in the 1850s.

• Disputed: English raiders were killed near Galashiels while eating unripe plums. The skirmish is known only from later local tradition, and there is no contemporary record of it.
• Disputed: the date of the skirmish. Local tradition and most modern accounts say 1337. McNeill says 1377. Neither date rests on a contemporary record, so the difference cannot be settled.
• Myth: The sweet itself dates from 1337. When soor plooms were first made is not known. The earliest description found is McNeill's of 1929, which says the plooms "commemorate" the incident.
• Disputed: the origin stories of other Border sweets. Tales such as the French prisoner of war behind Jeddart snails, or Jessie McVittie pulling Hawick balls on a nail in the 1850s, are local traditions reported by Carter and Rae and the Companion, not documented history.