Mince and tatties

Before mincers were invented, meat was chopped finely, making incisions, lines or ‘scotches’ (as in a game of hopscotch). In the course of time, the verb to scotch was mistaken for the people, and things made with scotched meat were called Scotch though there was nothing particularly Scottish about them. Scotch(ed) egg and Scotch(ed) Collops, the forerunner of modern mince, were dishes which caused this confusion. The tavern’s Scotched Collops had developed from a fast-cooked collops-in-the-pan which became scotch(ed) when the cook decided the meat was too tough for cooking in a piece and chopped it up.