Use the regional background below as a starting point for exploring the food, rather than expecting one dish to represent every household. Food traditions differ within a country and continue to change through travel, migration, and everyday cooking.

In this storyOverviewFast foodDishes and foodsCakes, breads and confectioneryFast food and takeawayFish and seafoodFruitMeat, poultry and game

Overview

Scottish cuisine (Scots keukin/cuisine; Biadh na h-Alba) encompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with Scotland. It has distinctive attributes and recipes of its own, but also shares much with other British and wider European cuisine as a result of local, regional, and continental influences — both ancient and modern.

Scotland's natural larder of vegetables, fruit, oats, fish and other seafood, dairy products and game is the chief factor in traditional Scottish cooking, with a high reliance on simplicity, generally without the use of rare (and historically expensive) spices found abroad.

History

Scotland, with its temperate climate and abundance of indigenous game species, has provided food for its inhabitants for millennia. The wealth of seafood available on and off the coasts provided the earliest settlers with sustenance. Agriculture was introduced, and primitive oats quickly became the staple.

Fast food

Scotland's reputation for coronary and related diet-based diseases is a result of the wide consumption of fast food since the latter part of the 20th century. Fish and chip shops (aka chippies) remain extremely popular, and the battered and fried haggis supper remains a favourite. In the area around Edinburgh, the most popular condiment for chip shop meals is "salt and sauce", the sauce element consisting of brown sauce thinned with water and vinegar. However in Glasgow, and elsewhere, chippy sauce is relatively unheard of and ketchup or salt and vinegar are preferred, prompting light-hearted debate on the merits of the options among the cities' residents, who tend to find the alternative a baffling concept.

Outlets selling pizzas, kebabs, pakoras and other convenience food have also become increasingly popular, with an extreme example of this style of food being the munchy box.

In addition to independent fast-food outlets, in the 1960s American-style burger bars and other restaurants such as Wimpy were introduced, and in the 1980s, McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken appeared in Scotland, followed by a large number of Subway franchises in the early 21st century. Branches of Greggs offering cakes, pastries and sandwiches are also very commonly found on the high streets of Scotland, often alongside smaller competing bakeries.

Dishes and foods

These dishes and foods are traditional to or originate in Scotland.

Cakes, breads and confectionery

Bannocks, flat quick bread

Berwick cockles, white-coloured sweet with red stripes

Black bun, a fruit cake completely covered with pastry

Butteries or rowies, savoury bread rolls

Caramel shortbread

Digestive biscuits

Drop scones, a type of pancake

Dundee cake, a fruit cake with a rich flavour

Ecclefechan tart

Edinburgh rock, a soft and crumbly confection

Empire biscuit, two shortbread biscuits with jam between, white icing and a cherry on top

Fatty cutties, a girdle cake

Festy cock, an oatmeal pancake

Fruit slice or flies' graveyard, sweet pastries with currants or raisins

Hawick balls, peppermint-flavoured boiled sweet

Jethart Snails, boiled sweets in the shape of a snail

Lucky tattie, white fondant with cassia, covered with cinnamon

Moffat toffee, notable for its tangy but sweet centre

Morning rolls, airy, chewy bread rolls

Oatcakes, flatbread similar to a cracker, biscuit, or pancake

Pan drops, a white, round, mint-flavoured boiled sweet with a hard shell and soft middle

Pan loaf, a bread loaf baked in a pan or tin

Penguin biscuits

Plain loaf, formerly and traditionally the most common form of bread

Puff candy, sugary toffee with a light, rigid, sponge-like texture

Scones

Scots crumpets, broadly similar to the pikelet

Scottish macaroon, made with a paste of potato and sugar, and often chocolate

Selkirk bannock; variations include Yetholm bannock—types of flat quick bread

Shortbread, biscuit usually made from sugar, butter, and wheat flour; variations include "petticoat tails"

Soor ploom, sharp-flavoured, round, green boiled sweet

Star rock

Tablet, a medium-hard, sugary confection

Tattie scone (potato scone), a Scottish variant of the savoury griddle scone

Tunis cake

Well-fired rolls, well-baked morning rolls

Fast food and takeaway

Deep-fried Mars bar, a novelty confection deep-fried in fish and chip shops

Fish and chips, fried fish in crispy batter, served with chips

Haggis pakora

Killie pie, a football pie

Munchy box, a selection of takeaway items served in a pizza box

Pizza crunch, a whole or sliced deep-fried, battered pizza

Fish and seafood

Arbroath smokies, a type of smoked haddock, a speciality of the town of Arbroath in Angus

Cabbie claw (cabelew), young cod in white sauce with chopped egg whites

Crappit heid, fish head stuffed with oats, suet and liver

Eyemouth pale, cold-smoked haddock with light golden hue and subtle smoky flavour

Finnan haddie, another cold-smoked haddock originating in Findon, Aberdeenshire

Kippers, a whole herring butterflied, salted or pickled, and cold-smoked

Kedgeree, a dish containing rice, smoked haddock, eggs, parsley, butter or cream

Rollmops, pickled herring rolled up with onion, gherkin or green olive, with pimento (on a stick)

Scampi

Smoked salmon

Tatties and herring

Fruit

Blaeberries – not identical to North American blueberries

Raspberries

Slaes

Strawberries

Tayberries

Meat, poultry and game

Ayrshire middle bacon, a specially cured bacon

Balmoral chicken

Black pudding (including Stornoway black pudding), red pudding, fruit pudding and white pudding, savoury puddings consisting of meat, fat and cereal

Forfar bridie, a meat and onion-filled pastry

Chicken tikka masala, roasted marinated chicken in curry

Collops, an escalope, thick slice of meat off the bone cut across the grain

Haggis, a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs) and several other ingredients, often considered the national dish of Scotland

Howtowdie with Drappit eggs, young hen with poached eggs

Kilmeny Kail, a dish originating in Fife consisting of rabbit, bacon, and either cabbage or kale

Mince and tatties, minced beef with potatoes, onions and often carrots

Mutton ham, lamb ham

Pottit heid (brawn), a head cheese

Potted hough, another head cheese

Reestit mutton, salted meat traditional to the Shetland Islands and considered the archipelago's "national dish"

Roast Aberdeen Angus beef

Roast haunch of venison

Roast grouse

Roast woodcock/snipe

Solan goose or guga (gannet) in the Western Isles

Scotch pie, a double-crust meat pie, usually containing mutton

Lorne sausage, a square-shaped sausage meat, not encased and mostly served for breakfast

Stovies, slow-stewed potatoes, often onions and meat

More to savor

Explore food culture →