Crowdie

Traditionally, crowdie was a crofter’s cheese made with any spare milk that wasn’t used in the brose or butter making – just to confuse things, ‘crowdie’ was also the name of the humble oatmeal brose long before it was the name given to a cheese. Milk would be left by the kitchen range to stay warm and sour naturally. As Rory Stone of Highland Fine Cheeses explains, the cultures in the liquid slowly eat the lactose and multiply throughout, souring the milk by releasing lactic acid. Eventually the milk by the range would set and form a curd, which would be scrambled, like eggs, over a gentle heat to separate curds from the whey. This is where Gourley’s stockings came in – she would tip the mixture into the legs of her old-fashioned sturdy stockings and hang them from the pulley above the kitchen sink. Others might tip the curds and whey into a muslin cloth or bag, or into a pillowcase, and hang it outside from the branch of a rowan tree. Once the whey had drained out, the soft cheese would be mixed with some salt, possibly wild herbs, and then enjoyed with oatcakes or bannocks. It was the simplest way of preserving milk in the days before pasteurisation and probably came to Scotland with the Vikings.