It's no surprise that the Bannockburn Live event taking place this weekend at the site of Robert the Bruce's defeat of the English in 1314 has a strong focus on food.
Apart from the obvious - the food and drink industry is Scotland's fastest growing sector, contributing £12.4 billion in annual sales to the economy - what we ate back then is pretty compelling stuff to witness.
Think crowd-pleasing whole hog roast and handmade bannocks cooked on a girdle. But two of the country's most prominent foodies appear to have differing views on the generally accepted wisdom that 700 years on, we've come full circle and are returning to a healthy diet of natural, indigenous ingredients similar to that of medieval Scotland.
Neil Forbes, chef-patron of Cafe St Honore in Edinburgh, thinks we have. Catherine Brown, the Scots food historian, thinks we could do better.
Brown is the editor of Broth To Bannocks: Cooking In Scotland 1690 To The Present Day, and has been commissioned by the 2014 Food and Drink campaign to research the everyday food eaten by ordinary Scots of the medieval period.
This forms the basis of a fascinating talk she is delivering at Bannockburn Live tomorrow: fascinating because it contains strong echoes of the modern food scene.
Brown points out that in the 14th century domestic animals were kept primarily for their milk, cheese and butter, and poultry for eggs.
Pigs were kept to eat up household scraps and the left-over whey from cheese-making. Only when the animals died of old age was their meat eaten and although it was by then "tough as old boots", its flavour was fantastic when slow-cooked.
Brown says nose-to-tail eating was universal, from sheep's heids to oxtails; innards were cooked and stuffed into stomach bags (haggis) and blood was used for flavour (black pudding).
Fish, shellfish and seaweed were plentiful and a more common part of the daily diet than red meat.
There were three religious "fish days" in the week, but since fresh fish was only available at the coast, the main fish diet for those living inland was salted, dried or vinegar-pickled to preserve it. Wild game, so fashionable now, was by necessity a common dish too.
Almost everyone grew their own kale, leeks, onions, fennel, mint and parsley. Bannocks, those healthy alternatives to today's commercially-produced bread, were made from indigenous, and healthy, crops of barley, oats or rye.
Fatty and high-calorie it may have been in parts, but given the physically active lifestyle of most ordinary Scots, the national diet of those days was nutritious, healthy and locally sourced. Consumers didn't suffer from gluten, lactose or wheat intolerance, or Type 2 diabetes, to the extent they do today.
With the revival of interest in growing-your-own, keeping bees and chickens, cooking from scratch, home baking, buying from farmers markets, it's tempting to conclude that yes, we're all medievalists now. But are we really?
The peasant food of medieval Scotland seems to hold more appeal for the wealthy than the poor; fresh fish consumption is woefully low; cut-price bread, sugary drinks, and high-salt, high-fat, high-additive processed food remains the diet staple of too many.
However, I'm becoming a little fed up with that oft-repeated message. I prefer to believe that thanks to the efforts of industry chiefs, chefs, producers and educators, the trickle-down effect is embracing a widening demographic, and that the national diet is gradually changing for the better. The rise of community kitchen gardens in Glasgow's more deprived areas such as Milton and Shettleston is just one example.
Neil Forbes, chef ambassador for the 2014 Food and Drink and the Scottish Government's Good Food Nation campaigns, has long been a champion of indigenous produce and says he notices an increasing number of those attending his food demonstrations at public events have "an incredible amount of interest in and knowledge of" where food comes from.
"People, including schoolchildren, know what's good and right to eat. They're pretty clued up," he says. He reckons there's a new pride in Scottish seasonal soft fruits and appreciation of our fishing industry; a new and lasting interest in cheaper cuts of meat, foraging for wild herbs and plants, and in heritage vegetables such as kale and cabbage, that is being pursued not only in top restaurant kitchens but also at home.
Where the medieval Scottish diet differs wildly from today's, though, is that people only had two meals each day, one in the morning and another in the evening.
I'm sure we'd agree that restricting our eating to two nutritious homemade meals a day, with no snacking in between and coupled with more physical exercise, is the ultimate goal. So forget the 5:2 Diet. Let's hear it for the 1314.
Visit bannockburnlive.com
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article