h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Peel and thinly slice several old potatoes. Leave to soak in coldwater for about half an hour (not vital!). Put layers of potato, thinly sliced onion, and tomato in an oven proof dish, seasoning as you go. Pour a cup of milk over the top and put in a moderately hot oven (about 180C) for an hour or more. This is one of those dishes which is usually better for being cooked for longer.

You can add bacon, cheese, or whatever.

Call your 'tomato-ey potato bake' 'tomato-ey potato bake' if you will, Fair Minerva, but please do not call it stovies. Stovies is a Scottish dish - traditionally from East coast areas - which evolved with local variations. Designed to make the most economical and tastiest possible use of potatoes and meat left-overs, and be filling and preferably nutritious, it could vary from a method of serving potatoes - i.e. "Stoved" - served with whatever meat was available to the more traditional all-in version.

The basic ingredients were much as you said, with the exception that dripping was more commonly used than butter. The meat was whatever was available, most frequently mutton, otherwise beef, pork, bacon ends or, if the gamekeeper hadn't caught you, the remains of a haunch of venison.

I have never come across recipes in which fish was used - there were too many other excellent ways of using fish, which was generally in greater supply than meat.

Can't imagine where the tomatoes came from either. They were neither readily available nor economical until recent years.

If you can lay hands on 'The Glasgow Cookery Book', so called because it was compiled by the College of Domestic Science, Queen's College, Glasgow and not because the recipes are Glaswegian, published by John Smith & Son, but probably out of print by now, it contains many old traditional recipes. It gives the recipe for stoved potatoes - i.e. without the meat - as distinct from stovies and specifies slow cooking in a pan rather than baking in an oven.

Bon appetit!

Call your 'tomato-ey potato bake' 'tomato-ey potato bake' if you will, Fair Minerva, but please do not call it stovies. Stovies is a Scottish dish - traditionally from East coast areas - which evolved with local variations. Designed to make the most economical and tastiest possible use of potatoes and meat left-overs, and be filling and preferably nutritious, it could vary from a method of serving potatoes - i.e. "Stoved" - served with whatever meat was available to the more traditional all-in version.

The basic ingredients were much as you said, with the exception that dripping was more commonly used than butter. The meat was whatever was available, most frequently mutton, otherwise beef, pork, bacon ends or, if the gamekeeper hadn't caught you, the remains of a haunch of venison.

I have never come across recipes in which fish was used - there were too many other excellent ways of using fish, which was generally in greater supply than meat.

Can't imagine where the tomatoes came from either. They were neither readily available nor economical until recent years.

If you can lay hands on 'The Glasgow Cookery Book', so called because it was compiled by the College of Domestic Science, Queen's College, Glasgow and not because the recipes are Glaswegian, published by John Smith & Son, but probably out of print by now, it contains many old traditional recipes. It gives the recipe for stoved potatoes - i.e. without the meat - as distinct from stovies and specifies slow cooking in a pan rather than baking in an oven.

Bon appetit!

Aberdeenshire (deep in the heart of stovies country) variations on the last recipe I gave, gleaned from piece in the Glasgow Herald (9 June) by restaurateur Don Smith. He uses butter rather than dripping, and left-over gravy rather than milk. And beef or mutton, but never fish. And cooks in a pan, not bakes in an oven.

Anyone tried stovies yet? Or are the stovies fans boring everyone else to death?