THEY may not sound the most appetising or sophisticated of dishes: inky pinky, rumbledethumps and hodge podge are unlikely to feature on most modern menus.

While a strong stomach might be required to handle the thought of hedgehog washed down with donkey tea; perhaps just as well the Edinburgh diners of days gone by had a city packed with taverns to visit for a pot of low alcohol small ale to slosh it all down with.

Or, if a night in was more to their taste, a glass of wine laced with a spoonful of sugar and spices…

The unusual sounding dishes are now to feature in a sensory tour of Edinburgh’s newly restored 500-year-old Royal Mile building, Gladstone’s Land, giving visitors a flavour of the tastes and smells its long-gone residents would have ‘enjoyed’ day in and day out.

Spanning three floors of the building, the tour will rewind time to the 17th, 18th and early 20th centuries to show how the city’s trade and wealth, markets, cooking skills and kitchen equipment, influenced the kinds of dishes that would have been eaten by its occupants.

While some dishes are familiar – such as porridge, oatcakes, mutton stews and oysters, which were consumed in huge quantities during the 17th and 18th century – others failed to stand the test of time.

Few today, for example, might be tempted to sip from their china cups on black tea cut with sheep’s dung, a practice carried out in 18th century Edinburgh to eke out a little further the household’s precious and expensive tea.

While the tour delves into the lives and tastes of the tenement’s residents down the years, it also reflects events happening outside its towering walls, such as international trade which brought exotic spices and fruits to the city.  

For early residents of Gladstone’s Land, no means to refrigerate or safely store raw meat and fish, and the backbreaking task of keeping fires going to cook and provide hot water, meant rustling up dinner would be a full time task that was fraught with danger.

Lindsay Middleton, PhD researcher in food history at the University of Glasgow and University of Aberdeen, has been working with Gladstone’s Land owners, the National Trust for Scotland, to create the tour.

She says: “Historical food is something we are becoming increasingly interested in, whether it is history week on the Great British Bake Off or reading recipes in historical cookbooks and marvelling at strange ingredients and cooking techniques.

“Unlike French or Italian cuisine, Scottish food is not typically thought of as delicious or particularly varied. But Scottish food does have a rich and varied history.

“In the harsh climate, Scottish people have had to be creative with food, leading to some historical dishes with excellent names, like rumbledethumps, a buttery mixture of potatoes and cabbage; inky pinky, leftover roast beef cooked with carrots and gravy; hodge podge, a stew of mutton and root vegetables.”

Meanwhile Scots, it seems have always been a sucker for something sweet: fairy butter, made from egg yolks, sugar and orange flower water, was a popular dessert sauce used to accompany biscuits and cakes.

Hedgehog must have tasted better than it sounds: a dessert made with  ground almonds, eggs, cream and butter, for some reason it was shaped to look like a hedgehog.

The tour examines dishes down the centuries through the eyes of three women who lived at the tenement: Margaret Nobel, the wife of a wealthy merchant who ran a high-end grocers and fabric business from the property in the 17th century, Elizabeth Pillans, an 18th century draper, and Mary Wilson who ran a boarding house at the location in the early 20th century.

According to Lindsay, servants whose job it was to run Elizabeth’s 17th century kitchen had their work cut out.

“In the 17th century, the way that you would have cooked, illuminated and kept your house warm was by using fire. There is no oven here, only the kitchens of the very wealthy would have had these - having enough wood to keep an oven going was expensive, and ovens themselves took up a lot of space, as well as presenting a heightened fire risk.

“It wasn’t until the 19th century that enclosed stoves and ranges were introduced into kitchens, so all cooking would have been done over an open fire.”

“You can imagine the amount of sweat, work and time that went into cooking a meal in the 17th century,” she adds.

Edinburgh’s role as a bustling trade hub meant its better off citizens often had a first taste of exotic and unusual foods imported from across the world, while its narrow Old Town streets would be an aromatic mix of food, bodies and animals – alive and dead.

“The smell of food, bodies and animals would have filled the messy and muddy streets, and it would have been incredibly noisy,” she adds.

“Fleshers, or butchers, would have the carcasses of cattle and sheep hanging up as they butchered them, blood joining the mud on the streets. Hucksters, who foraged for and sold shellfish from the nearby coast, would be gutting fish and shelling oysters on the street too.

“There were also more expensive and exotic imported spices, wines and dried fruits.

 An inventory of Margaret’s husband’s possessions in 1632 showed a list of foods that would have been beyond the imagination of the city’s poor, including raisins, ginger, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, rice, almonds, cloves, lemon-peel marmalade and tobacco were all listed.

By the 18th century, Edinburgh was fascinated by tea, which would have been offered to customers of Elizabeth Pillans’ shop as they browsed her stock of satin, silks, lace, ribbons, furs and muslins.

Some tea, however, left a bad taste: green tea would be coloured with dangerous chemicals such as copper carbonate or lead chromate to keep their colour, while black tea was laced with leaves, ash, floor sweepings, lead or sheep dung.

Few who indulged in tea at the time, however, are likely to have paused to consider the tea and sugar came at the cost of enslaved lives.

Visitors joining the tour will have the opportunity to sample some of  Gladstone’s Land favourites, such as donkey tea, a grim-sounding drink made from  toast steeped in hot water until it took the colour and flavour of the bread. Sieved to remove the crumbs, it was then drunk.

Rescued from demolition by the Trust in 1934, over the last 40 years the building has mainly told the story of merchant Thomas ‘Gledstanes’, who bought it in the early 17th century, and commissioned its Renaissance-style painted ceilings. 

Years of meticulous historical research has now uncovered the lives of other residents of the property.

It has now reopened after a £1.5 million restoration, with three floors laid out to reflect the lives and employment of its occupants and the rise and decline of the city’s Old Town told through interactive exhibits, documents and furnishings.

Tables Through Time: Food in Gladstone’s Land will begin next month.