Tattie Scones: The Potato Scone and the Scottish Girdle

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 word history rests on the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL). The potato's arrival in Scotland is well covered by Annette Hope's A Caledonian Feast (1987) and McNeill's The Scots Kitchen (1929), which do not always agree on the first dates. The weak point is the dish's early history. Between the 1790 record of the word and the recipes of the twentieth century there is little detail about who made tattie scones, where and how. Nobody can say who first made one, and nothing here should be read as a claim that the dish was invented in Scotland.

What a tattie scone is

established A tattie scone is made from mashed potato with just enough flour to bind it. McNeill's recipe in The Scots Kitchen (1929) is typical. To half a pound of mashed potatoes, preferably warm from the pot, she adds a good pinch of salt and half an ounce of melted butter, then works in as much flour as the potatoes will take up, about two ounces. The dough is rolled out very thin on a floured board, cut into rounds and pricked with a fork, then cooked on a hot girdle for about three minutes a side. They are kept wrapped in a towel until needed, and the fresher the better. The butter, she says, may be left out of the dough and spread on the scones instead.

established Annette Hope's recipe of 1987 is almost the same: half a pound of boiled, sieved potatoes, two ounces of flour, salt and a little milk to make a very stiff dough. She warns that mealy potatoes may need less flour. The dough is rolled to about an eighth of an inch, cut into plate-sized rounds, each round cut into four, pricked all over and baked on a lightly floured pan or girdle until opaque and speckled brown on both sides.

established No raising agent. Unlike most scones, the tattie scone is not raised. There is no baking powder, soda or yeast in either recipe. It is a flatbread, and its texture depends on the potato. Hope admits potato scones are "an acquired taste, being flat and somewhat leathery unless absolutely freshly made".

established Farls. The usual shape is a round cut into quarters. In Scots, a quarter of a round bannock is a farl. The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014), quoting John Ayto, explains that "farl" was originally "fardel", meaning "fourth part", and cites Robert Burns's line "an farls bak'd wi' butter" from "The Holy Fair". The same word is used in Ulster for the potato farl.

The girdle

established The girdle, a flat iron plate hung or set over the fire, is the tool that made Scottish baking. McNeill writes that among rural Scots the girdle long did the work of the oven, and the bannock the work of the loaf. Oatcakes, bannocks, drop scones and soda scones were all girdle breads. A tattie scone is one more.

traditional Culross. McNeill says the modern girdle was invented at Culross in Fife, that James VI gave the burgh the sole right to make girdles in 1599, that Charles II confirmed it in 1666, and that the Culross girdle-smiths were put out of business in the mid-eighteenth century when the Carron ironworks began making cast-iron girdles in quantity. The royal grant is a matter of record; "invented" is a stronger claim than the evidence will bear.

established How to use one. McNeill's general rule still holds: "the girdle is floured for dough and greased for batter". Tattie scones are dough, so the girdle is dusted with flour, not greased. To test the heat she sprinkled a little flour on the iron. If it browned at once the girdle was too hot; if it took a few seconds it was right.

The potato comes to Scotland

established A potato scone needs potatoes, and they were late arrivals. Hope records that educated Scots knew of potatoes in the second half of the seventeenth century. The gardener John Reid recommended them in The Scots Gard'ner in 1683, and in that year they were grown in the physic garden of Edinburgh's medical school, the forerunner of the Royal Botanic Garden. McNeill gives the first household record: in 1701 the Duchess of Buccleuch's household book notes a peck of potatoes brought from Edinburgh, costing half a crown.

shared The first fields. Field cultivation came slowly and the "first" is disputed. Hope says Cockburn of Ormiston seems to have grown potatoes in a tenant's field in 1726, and that a Kilsyth farmer was renting fields for them by 1739. McNeill, quoting Robert Chambers, credits Robert Graham, factor of the forfeited Kilsyth estate, with planting half an acre in 1739, and records a family tradition that a William Mutter planted a field at Liberton Mains, near Edinburgh, in 1719. The Kilsyth crop drew visitors from far away to see the novelty.

established From novelty to staple. Hope dates general field cultivation in the Lothians to the 1760s. In the north-east, the failure of the grain harvest in 1782 persuaded farmers to grow potatoes, at first mainly for animals. In the west Highlands, after early refusals, potatoes became the staple of the poor; Samuel Johnson noted in 1773 that on Skye they were "now one of the principal parts of their food". Ayrshire, where the climate and soil suited the crop and the Clyde towns bought it, became a major potato county. It is from Ayrshire that the first record of the tattie scone comes.

established Famine. Dependence on one crop had a cost. Potato blight reached the Highlands in the autumn of 1846. T. M. Devine's To the Ends of the Earth (2011) records early estimates that the crop failed entirely in over three-quarters of crofting parishes, that about 200,000 people were at serious risk, and that relief committees and the Free Church kept starvation largely at bay, unlike in Ireland. The famine years, Devine shows, drove heavy emigration from the Highlands until the mid-1850s. Hope adds that the disaster pushed the rest of Scotland into breeding new, more resistant potatoes, and Scotland became a major centre of seed potato growing.

How old is the tattie scone?

established The word. The DSL records "tattie" itself, a clipped form of "potato", from the 1780s, and "tattie-scone" from 1790, in the Poems of A. Tait of Ayrshire. It defines a tattie scone simply as a scone made of flour and mashed potato, and marks the word as general Scots. Later citations come from Roxburghshire (1923) and Edinburgh (1964). Shetland and Caithness had "tattie-bannock" or "tattie-bannie" for a cake of flour, milk and mashed potato.

established The word "scone". The DSL traces "scone" to Older Scots skonn (1513), a four-cornered cake, probably shortened from Middle Dutch schoonbrot, "fine bread". The OED, as reported by the Companion, gives the same derivation and notes the Scottish pronunciation "skon".

established On the table. By the mid-nineteenth century potato scones were part of a gentry breakfast. McNeill quotes the novelist L. B. Walford, born a Colquhoun of Luss, recalling her parents' breakfast table: "such potato scones, barley scones, and scones that were just 'scones' and nothing else", each kind wrapped in a white napkin. The DSL quotes a Dumfriesshire book of 1899 listing "Potato scones, soda scones, 'droppet' scones, treacle scones". Hope's list of the good things at a farm tea includes both potato cakes and potato scones.

shared Older than the record? Potatoes were mashed and mixed with meal from the moment they were common, and the step to a girdle cake is short. The Companion, citing Catherine Brown, notes that Orkney's bere bannocks were once made as very thin, soft pancakes, much like a modern potato scone, before raising agents came in during the nineteenth century. That shows the shape and method were already old when potatoes arrived. It does not show when potato first went into the dough.

Scottish, Irish or both?

shared The potato scone is not a Scottish monopoly. The Oxford Companion to Food says that mashed potatoes mixed with a little flour and milk make potato scones, "popular in both Scotland and Ireland", and that they were once made in parts of England such as the West Country but are now seldom seen.

established Fadge. The closest relative is the Ulster potato bread called fadge. The Companion describes it as mashed boiled potatoes with a little white flour, baked in rounds or farls on a griddle, often in bacon fat. It was well established in Ulster by the early nineteenth century. An Irish writer described the diet of Ballymartin in County Antrim in 1838 as including "'Fadge', a very good kind of bread made of potatoes and flour and baked on a griddle". In parts of Northern Ireland fadge cakes are called "tatties". Fadge is part of the Ulster fry, as the tattie scone is part of the Scottish breakfast.

shared The two traditions grew up a short sea crossing apart, with people moving both ways. McNeill notes that the potato itself came to the west of Scotland from Ireland: a man near Campbeltown is said to have brought its culture to Kintyre, and from there it spread to Glasgow and the Isles. It is not possible to say which side of the North Channel made the first potato farl. The Scottish tattie scone and the Ulster farl are best seen as one family.

established Further afield. The Companion records Norwegian potato flatbreads, lompe and potetlefse, as soft modern variants of the old lefse. Potato and flour cooked on a hot plate is a natural invention wherever potatoes and griddles meet.

Thrift and war

established Tattie scones are a way of using leftovers. McNeill's preference for potatoes still warm from the pot shows they were made on the day the potatoes were boiled, but cold mash serves too. The dish stretches a little flour a long way.

established That made potatoes useful in wartime. In the Second World War the Ministry of Food's "Potato Pete" campaign urged people to eat more potatoes. The King's College London archive notes the booklet's claim that potatoes "help to save both fat and flour in pastries", and the National Library of Scotland holds a copy of Potato Pete's Recipe Book. Neither source mentions tattie scones by name, but the logic is the same.

The modern tattie scone

established Hope's memory of Edinburgh in the 1950s shows the scone as a shop food. Before the Clean Air Act, she writes, she walked home through the smog from lectures, stopping to buy potato scones, which she warmed at her gas fire and ate with butter and tea.

established Breakfast. Today the tattie scone is part of the full Scottish breakfast, fried in the pan with eggs, bacon and Lorne sausage. It is also eaten in a morning roll with Lorne sausage, bacon or a fried egg, or cold with butter and jam. Bakers and supermarkets across Scotland sell them in packs, ready to toast or fry. Hope still thought they were much better made fresh in one's own kitchen.

shared How to cook a bought one. Shop scones are best reheated in a dry or lightly greased pan, or toasted. Frying in bacon fat, as with Ulster fadge, is the breakfast method, though it makes them richer than the original.

Making them well

established The old recipes agree on a few points. Use floury potatoes, mashed smooth while warm. Use only as much flour as the potato will take, so the scone tastes of potato. Roll thin, about 3 millimetres. Prick the surface so it does not blister. Cook on a hot, floured, ungreased girdle or heavy pan until speckled brown on both sides, then wrap in a cloth to keep them soft.

shared Some modern cooks add a pinch of baking powder for lightness. McNeill and Hope did not, and the unraised scone is the traditional form.

• The word "tattie-scone" is recorded in Scots from 1790.
• "Tattie" is a shortened form of "potato".
• A farl is a quarter of a round; the word comes from "fardel", a fourth part.
• In 1701 a peck of potatoes cost the Duchess of Buccleuch half a crown.
• In parts of Northern Ireland, potato bread is called "tatties".
• Shetland and Caithness had a "tattie-bannock".
• Most tattie scones contain no baking powder or soda.
• McNeill says James VI gave Culross the sole right to make girdles in 1599.

• Myth: The tattie scone is a uniquely Scottish invention. Potato scones and potato breads were made in Ireland, especially Ulster, and once in parts of England. The name and the Scottish breakfast role are distinctive, not the idea.
• Disputed: Which came first, the tattie scone or the Ulster potato farl. Both are recorded from around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The evidence does not allow either to be called the original.
• Myth: Tattie scones are an ancient dish. They cannot be older than everyday potato growing, which in most of Scotland dates from the second half of the eighteenth century. The word is first recorded in 1790.
• Disputed: Who planted Scotland's first potato field. Kilsyth in 1739, Ormiston in 1726 and Liberton in 1719 have all been named. The 1719 claim rests on a family tradition.
• Disputed: That the girdle was invented at Culross. Culross held a royal monopoly on making girdles from 1599, but iron baking plates are older.
• Myth: Proper scones always contain a raising agent. The traditional tattie scone is unraised.