Food for thought

Recently on a site about Orkney recipes someone asked what Orcadian's favourite foods were. Of course there is no simple answer to that since we have a population of about 20,000 people their individual tastes are going to be widely varied. Since the person asking had recently come to the islands to work in one of our Chinese restaurants I wrote this to show how our tastes have changed.

When I was young ordinary folk did not dine out much, there were a few cafes Peedie Charlies (the Pomona owned by Charlie Celli, the Central Cafe (Now Trenabies ) the Athol (where the Orcadian bookshop is) had two parts downstairs was Formica tables it opened early so folk would head there before going to work. It also had an upstairs restaurant which served Lunch. the community centre was farther down St Magnus lane than it is now. There were another two either side of the museum though I don't remember ever having been in them, the cosy cafe to the right of the arch and the St Magnus cafe to the left of the arch. From this you can see that the older generation were more folk for plain fare fry ups, mince and potatoes or stew.

The hotels had restaurants but they were mainly for visitors or for special events. Even at home many Orcadians had fairly simple tastes soups, mince, stew, boiled fish (quite often salted fish that had been soaked overnight, things like cod and ling, there was also cuithes and saithes(coal fish of different ages) saithes, fried fish usually herrings in oatmeal. There was also hen which was boiled with some vegetables, sometimes for special it would be taken out and browned in the oven while the stock it made was used for soup.

Pudding even when dining out was inclined to be simple things like ice-cream and tinned fruit cocktail, fruit pie or crumble with custard or cream(this having it with ice-cream is relatively recent). Today's Orcadian however has a far wider taste in food with the influence of foreign holidays and the opening of new restaurants from different cultures.

While our diet was restricted it was on the whole healthier than we have today with little in the way of processed food other than tinned fruit which we could not grow on the islands. The exception to the healthy lifestyle however was the Orcadian love of baking never usually anything to fancy but the Scottish Woman's Rural Institute which the men dubbed Silly Women Running Idle encouraged great competition among the women in their baking, jams and crafts.

A quick perusal of any of the small cookbooks issued by SWRI , church guilds or fundraising groups show the popularity of tray bakes and fruit loaf and small fancies(not to be confused with those fantastic confections found in French patisseries). Shortbread and various biscuits based on shortbread were also very popular as were fairy cakes which for some reason are now called cupcakes though the topping was a small spread of glace icing(made with icing / powdered sugar and warm water) if it was for "special" when visitors came you topped them with half a glace cherry otherwise you might have a few hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top, even enjoyment was not about excess in those days.