DASG Blog

Fuine

From a young age I’ve had an interest in baking. I learned to make cakes and buns from my mother and my grandmother, as many people in many different places have done over the centuries, and I’m sure that these skills will be useful to me all my life.
 
When I was a student, I was lucky to receive some excellent Gaelic recipes for oatcakes, shortbread and “duff” from two lovely ladies in the north of Skye. I still use these recipes today, along with those I collected from my own family. Apart from this, however, I don’t know a lot about baking in Gaelic Scotland. So this led me to the subject of this week’s blog post – Gaelic words connected to “fuine” or baking.
 
Although food and drink are an important part of daily life for most people, and although there are lots of cakes and baked goods made in Scotland, our archive was a little bare this week when it came to words to do with baking. Apart from “fuine” itself, this is what I found in my research:
 
“Clàr-fuine”, meaning “baking board” or “kneading board” was collected from Harris and from Perthshire. This is a large piece of wood, or a board that is used when kneading dough to make bread. It was interesting to me to realise that the word “fuine” can mean both “baking” and “kneading” in Gaelic.
 
Although there wasn’t a lot of vocabulary connected to baking in Faclan bhon t-Sluagh, I did discover something very interesting in our Corpus. This recipe for “Struthan na h-‘Èill Mhìcheal” or Michaelmas cake comes from Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist, by Margaret Fay Shaw:
 
“THE RECIPE FOR THE MICHAELMAS CAKE
Four saucerfuls of barley, a pinch of baking soda, enough water to make a dough.
 
Knead and shape into a bannock and bake on a girdle.
 
Coating for bannock: 2 eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls of syrup, 2 tablespoonfuls of cream.
 
Beat together and then spread on one side of bannock with a feather, holding it in front of the fire to bake.
 
Then turn and do the same on the other side.
 
While putting on the coating keep turning the bannock wheel-wise and put on several coats.”
(p. 58)
 
These bannocks would be made for Michaelmas, or St Michael’s Day on the 29th of September. Traditionally they would be made from three different types of flour from the farm or croft where it was baked. There is more information about these cakes and about other food and drink in this record in our archive.
 
Do you have any recipes or other words about baking in Gaelic Scotland? Why not write to us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know. And if you give this recipe a go, I hope it goes well for you!