Food and the Scottish royal household

[8] Murdo Stirling, pâtissier for Mary of Guise, bought four waffle irons in March 1539, and in June 1540 supervised the installation of ovens in the king's ships, including the Salamander for a voyage to Orkney.

[27] Rabbit warrens at Stirling near the Royal Park, attested by the names Coneyhill and Kenningknows, ponds for fish and birds, and later, a dovecote would provide food and also add to the Stewart's image of wealth, abundance, and prestige.

[33] Although the old kitchens and Great Hall of Holyrood Palace have been demolished, the supper room, an intimate space in the royal bedchamber, where Mary, Queen of Scots dined with David Rizzio can still be seen.

[34] The day after the death of Lord Darnley at the Kirk o' Field, the servant known as "French Paris" came to queen's bedchamber to hang her bed with mourning black and light candles.

[39] It lists the same three opening dishes of the first course as, "The Borys head solemnly shedd, Sheydis & Rondis of Braun with mustard, Gambonys of Bacon with pestellys of pork".

Further, there was of meats, of bread, white bread main breid and gingerbread, with fleshes (meats), beef, mutton, lamb, cunning (rabbit), crane, swan, wild goose, partridge and plover, duck, "brissill cock" (turkeys) and powins (peacocks) together with black cock and moor fowl and capercaillies and also the stanks (moat) that was round about the palace was sowmond (stocked) full of all delicate fishes, as salmon, trout and perches, pikes and eels and all other kind of delicate fishes that could be gotten in fresh waters was all ready to be prepared for the banquet.

[69] The household books include provisions bought for hunting trips,[70] wedding feasts (for the daughters of Regent Arran), banquets on the Great Michael, table linen, soap for its laundry,[71] and the swaddling clothes of royal infants.

A wide variety of fish and sea food was served including mackerel, Loch Fyne herring, conger eel, dried whitings, whale and porpoise.

[78] A few pages which head sections of the accounts have illustrations or doodles including a unicorn, a thistle and rose, Lucretia, and figure of a man with a tent or pavilion, with the motto "spes fove".

[79] When James V returned from France with Madeleine of Valois, he bought barrels of olive oil and verjuice, claret and white wine, and no less than 1762 pounds of salted lard, as a commitment to embrace French cuisine.

When the king and Mary of Guise were at Ravenscraig Castle they ate pikes and eels from Loch Leven, and the Earl of Huntly brought aqua vitae and venison to Falkland.

[87] At the conclusion of the war known as the Rough Wooing, on 21 May 1550, Regent Arran hosted a banquet in his Edinburgh lodging for Mary of Guise's brother, Claude, Marquis de Mayenne, who had been a hostage in England for the peace negotiations.

West coast herrings are aleca occidentalia; flounders seem to be bronoscopi; the woodcock is gallus silvestris; river trout were trute torrentium; pewter dishes are parapsides stanee; napkins are manutergia.

The Despences include some details, nineteen horses were used to move the contents of the great larder, the kitchen utensils, the wine cellar, bakehouse, and the coffers of the bread pantry.

After visiting Guise at Stirling Castle and making a deal in October 1547, Arnault shipped wine, peas, beans, figs, capers, onions, verjuice, and lard to the west of Scotland, probably Dumbarton.

[103] Her argentar and household "furnisher" Alexander Durham collected a contribution of £124-10s-8d in August 1564 from Coupar Angus Abbey towards the expenses of a hunting trip to Glen Tilt, where her father James V had been banquetted.

[109] According to Anthony Standen, before the baptism of Prince James in 1566, an associate of Francis Yaxley came from Flanders with a gift from Margaret Douglas including a "bancketynge dysshe of sugare and marmelade".

[120] A detailed account of food supplied to Mary, Queen of Scots, at Tutbury Castle and Wingfield Manor in England, made by Brian Cave was acquired by the British Library in 2022.

Annabell Murray, Countess of Mar and her servants were to have:First, daily 14 great breads, 1 quart 1 pint wine, 1 gallon 2 quarts ale, 3 loads of coal weekly in winter, viz., from 1 September to 1 April, and in summer 1 1/2 loads, a half pound of candle in winter, and in summer a half of a quarter of a pound of candle.To my Lady and her servants daily in the kitchen on a flesh (meat) day, 2 "particles" of beef, 2 boiled poultry, 2 roast capons, 3 quarters of mutton, a kid, a side of "sukand" veal, 6 chickens or doves, with baking meat to my Lady only, at the discretion of the Master Household, with pottages after their discretion, and on the fish days suchlike referred to the Steward and Master Household.

[130] He wrote to Robert Murray of Abercairny for "venison, wild fowls, fed capons" for the wedding of Henrietta Stewart and George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly in July 1588 at Holyrood.

[131] When he was still anticipating the arrival of his bride Anne of Denmark, on 30 August 1589 he wrote to ask the Laird of Arbuthnott and Sir Patrick Vans of Barnbarroch to provide "fat beef, mutton on foot, wild fowls and venison, to be delivered to Walter Naish, Master of the Royal Larder".

At Stirling Castle from February 1594 eight aristocratic women or "dames of honour" attending Prince Henry, including Annabell Murray, Countess of Mar, Marie Stewart, Countess of Mar, Lady Abercairny, and Lady Dudhope, were granted a daily allowance for dinner on meat and fish days, including:On the flesh day to the first service, a piece of beef, two pieces of sodden mutton, a boiled fowl, with six dishes of pottage.

[143] The banquet included a course of desserts fashioned in the shape of fish by a Flemish sugar confectioner Jacques de Bousie served in the Great Hall from a model ship with working cannon.

[144] The poet William Fowler described the scene, explaining that the sugar-laden ship represented the king and queen's good fortune in their voyage across the North Sea and her safe delivery from the "conspiracy of witches", and so Neptune:did bring such things as the Sea affords, to decore this festival time withal: which immediatly were delivered to the Sewers (servers), forth of the galleries of this ship, out of christalline glasse, very curiously painted with gold & azure, all sorts of fishes: as herrings, whitings, flooks (flounder), oysters, buckles (shell fish), limpets, partans (crab), lapstars (lobsters), crabs, spout-fish, clams: with other infinite things made of sugar, and most truely represented in their own shape.

[154] They are written in the Scots Language, (as is a book from 1512 covering the food of the household of James V as a baby at Linlithgow Palace), and detail the wedding feast of Anne of Denmark's preacher John Sering and Little Anna, and the visit of Ulrik, Duke of Holstein.

[155] In May 1599 Thomas Burnett supplied the queen's chamber with fresh butter, eggs, cinnamon, sugar, oranges, and limes, possibly for Marion the bedchamber cook.

[156] The town of Edinburgh hosted banquets for James VI and Anne of Denmark at public expense, to mark special occasions and to maintain royal favour.

These stories, and Pitscottie's description of the Atholl banquet, demonstrate that the provision of food in quantity was a significant element of courtly and aristocratic display, to be incorporated in the storytelling and recollections of later generations.

[181] Blakeway has also compared costs to test the contemporary assertion of the comptroller David Wood of Craig that Regent Arran spent more on his household in 1543 than James V, that he "haldis ane greit hous and is at mair (more) sumpteous expense nor (than) umquhile (the late) our said soverane lord held in his time".

[186] After calculating and extrapolating the costs of food, the Master Households were advised that no more than £900 should be spent yearly on spices for the queen bought from Andrew Quhyte, and no more than £1500 on sugar, comfits, almonds, oil, and lard supplied by Robert Robesoun.