Scotland to venture an understatement, is not at all difficult to distinguish from England; the differences leap to the eye in many different aspects of the two cultures, including notably food and cookery. In these and other respects the people of Scotland have closer links with Scandinavia and France (as explained below), than do the English. Geographical differences have tended to give them different staple foods, especially in the northern part of the country; a lower level of prosperity in the past has imprinted a certain frugality on their kitchens; and the same genius which resulted in a quite disproportionate number of Scots being responsible for British achievements in medicine, engineering, philosophy, and the construction and administration of the British Empire flowered in a different way to produce some of the finest (and in the instance of Meg Dods most astonishing, even surreal) writing on food.
