Famous Scots serve up their favourite childhood recipes and talk about the role food played in their early lives

SAY you had been invited for tea to Alan Cumming's pad in upstate New York. You might be forgiven for expecting to be quaffing champagne and chomping on canapés with the recently honoured Scottish actor, but you would be wrong – he's much more likely to serve up a bowl of stovies, a staple of his childhood in Angus.

Cumming's favourite recipe is one of those gathered by award-winning cook and food writer Sue Lawrence in her latest book, Taste Ye Back: Great Scots and the Food that Made Them. A collection of recipes from 70 famous Scots, it's more than a cookbook as it also contains childhood reminiscences tied up with food. From the Prime Minister down, the celebs have served up a recipe that reminds them of their youth, along with anecdotes that give a glimpse of the influences that shaped some of the country's most prominent personalities. A percentage of the book's royalties will go to the Children's Hospice Association Scotland.

Proust had his madeleines, the lemon cakes whose taste immediately transported him back to his childhood, but Lawrence's celebrity offerings have more of a tartan flavour – for Gordon Brown, it's apple and blackberry crumble; Sharleen Spiteri adored chicken and lemon soup; and Andy Murray loved granny's shepherd's pie.

"There's so much knowledge among the older generation that we will lose before long," says Lawrence. "Not the recipes, as they are written down, but the techniques and skills. It was the social history element that became very important writing the book: Midge Ure telling me there was no table in his house until he was 12, or Denis Law telling me that in his 1940s childhood in Aberdeen he didn't think there was such a thing as a main course; he had soup and a pudding, apart from on Saturdays, when they would have homemade fish suppers, courtesy of his fisherman dad," she says.

It's clear from the book that those in their 40s and 50s loved their mum's cooking, while for the younger ones it's grannies who wield the ladle, which tells us something about the changing social changing dynamics of our country. "We are all cooking less and less, and mums have to work nowadays," says Lawrence.

Common favourites that pepper the pages include mince, stovies, soups, tattie scones and chicken and rice, while cloutie dumplings, crumbles, pies, shortbread, tablet and sugar sandwiches are there to sate our national sweet tooth.

"What amazed me were people's first childhood food memories. Siobhan Redmond's was walking around with a bit of string round her neck attached to an apple so she wouldn't drop it, or Andrew Marr being given bicarbonate of soda by his dad so he would throw up his Christmas pudding and could fit in more," says Lawrence.

The most bizarre memory came from Chancellor Alistair Darling, whose 1950s Orkney upbringing saw his granny and aunties using their hands rather than wooden spoons to mix cakes and sauces.

In the days before takeaways, freezers and eating out, it's the regional, seasonal aspect of the recipes and memories that stands out. "Everyone mentioned the cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients that gave the flavour. So it's not just nostalgia and a case of rose-tinted tastebuds: things really did taste better."

And because we're in Scotland, even though these are childhood memories, a dram or two inevitably crops up in the ingredients. "Yes, it wasn't uncommon for drink to be involved in the recipes," laughs Lawrence. There's a wee Sheena McDonald perched on the manse table being bribed with syllabub to have her toenails clipped, or Dougray Scott's dad whipping up an eggnog with brandy. "Only at the weekends, though," says Lawrence.

Here are some of the celebrities with their favourite recipes.

Gordon Brown

Prime Minister

Born 1951

"Growing up in Kirkcaldy, my father was the minister of our local church. This meant that our home, the manse, was always open to visitors. My mum would always have a huge pot of soup sitting on the stove so there was always something hot and nourishing to offer guests. As one of three boys, we had great appetites, so she was also busy making big stews or Sunday roasts served with potatoes and vegetables. We lived by the sea so we grew up eating lots of fish as well.

"In the summertime, the Browns would go out picking raspberries and have those with ice-cream as a treat. My mum was also a great apple crumble and custard person, which we all loved.

"My dad had to look after the cooking for a long time once, while my mother was unwell. He had only one dish: omelettes with cornflour, an ingredient I have never understood for an omelette to this day! But I do remember how hard he tried to make sure my brothers and I were well fed and looked after in my mother's absence. I'm not much better at cooking myself, but I'm okay at rustling up a simple lunch or supper for the boys when needs be, and the microwave is a wonderful invention for when I'm on my own or working late. My father could have done with one of those."

APPLE AND BLACKBERRY CRUMBLE

Serves four

175g/6oz flour (brown and white mixed)

50g/1oz low-fat margarine

50g/1oz butter

50g/1oz soft brown sugar plus an extra 3 tbsp

2 tbsp muesli (optional)

225g/8oz cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks

225g/8oz blackberries (or rhubarb, washed and cut into small chunks, or raspberries in the summer)

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas 6. Put the flour, margarine and butter into a big mixing bowl and rub together through your fingers until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the 50g/1oz sugar, and, for a little extra crunch, add a handful of muesli if you like.

Load the apple chunks and blackberries (or other fruit) into a pie dish. Sprinkle three tablespoons of sugar over the fruit and a tiny dash of water. Pile the crumble mixture over the fruit, smoothing over to make a flat surface without pressing down too hard.

Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, until the crumble top is golden and you can just see the fruit bubbling at the edges.

You can serve the crumble straight away with custard, yoghurt or ice-cream, but it is also good cold if you have any left over the next day.

Sue says: I add an extra 50g/1 oz butter to the crumble to make it moist.

Alan Cumming

Actor

Born 1965

Alan Cumming's earliest memory of food is having mashed-tattie sandwiches while pedalling round the kitchen in Fassfearn, near Fort William. "They are an overlooked delicacy!" Food was very important in Cumming's home because they lived in the country and couldn't just pop out to get something. His mum cooked and baked constantly, and indeed still does.

Even now he still craves stovies, which he finds so comforting and often makes in his own home. "They also remind me of parties and happy times. I actually really love dishes that are just one thing, instead of lots of different bits to choose from."

On occasional trips to the chip shop as a child, his preference was always for white pudding suppers over fish suppers, and it still is. "White pudding rules!" he says.

"I love making soup and hearty things like that, but I pretty much will have a bash at anything – especially in my house in upstate New York, because, like my childhood, it's the kind of place that you have to cook at home, because you are up a mountain and there is no other alternative."

VEGETARIAN STOVIES

Serves many

Stovies is a Scottish dish that is traditionally made with beef dripping, but I am a vegetarian so I have made up my own version.

It is real peasant food and ideal for people who, like me, love to have a plateful of one thing. I much prefer a mush-style dish to something with loads of different components.

Stovies are so great for parties on cold winter nights because you can just leave them on the stove and people can help themselves throughout the night as they please.

olive oil

3-4 cloves of garlic (more, if you like)

4 large onions

8-10 large potatoes

tamari or dark soy sauce, to taste

Worcestershire sauce, to taste

salt and pepper, to taste

a couple of handfuls of soya mince

In a wok or large pot, put a good old sloosh of olive oil. (I normally turn the bottle upside down and count until about four.) Chop up some garlic, and fry it in the olive oil for a bit. Don't let it get crispy, but tit needs to permeate the oil and make a tasty base for the stovies.

Take the biggish onions and chop them up into fairly big chunks and add them to the olive oil and garlic. Fry them for a bit longer, then put a lid on and leave them to sweat for a bit (about five minutes).

Now scrub and chop up the potatoes into fairly big chunks. Add to the sweating onions and garlic and leave for a bit to get all infused.

Now comes the fun bit. Get your tamari or dark soy sauce and squirt about 20 or so squirts into the wok, then do the same with your Worcestershire sauce. You could also use BBQ sauce; basically the trick is to make the stovies tasty and to give it a bit of a browny colour. You do all this to taste, and can also add some salt and pepper (although don't go crazy with the salt if you are going heavy on the tamari). Then throw in a couple of big handfuls of the soya mince. (My assistant Joey thought I said soya mints the first time I asked him to buy some, and had a devil of a job tracking any down).

Pour water into the wok so that all the ingredients are just submerged. Bring to the boil for a bit, turn it down to simmer, then go away and check your e-mails or have a bath or something.

Stir occasionally, and once the potatoes are cooked and soft you can give them a little beating up with a spoon to make the stovies more mushy in texture. I usually cook mine for about 30 minutes, with the lid half on, half off. Then turn them off, put the lid on and let them cook in their own juices.

You could also add things like hot sauce or mustard if you felt daring. Enjoy!

Sue says: This dish requires no additional salt if you are using both Worcestershire sauce and tamari sauce.

Jackie Kay

Poet and novelist

Born 1961

As a child, it was the "complete unpredictability of a bowl of porridge" that author Jackie Kay remembers when she was growing up in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow. "It could be lumpy, too salty, was always grey and to me was associated with depression. It was eaten a lot at home, and I hated it – still do!"

But she also had good memories: she adored her granny's soup, made from a hough bone, the meat then shredded into the soup with perfectly diced carrots, diced potatoes, barley, marrowfat peas and red lentils. "Granny made this on Wednesdays, and my dad would visit her then and bring home the pot of soup for us. Then, when we all visited her on Sunday, we would return the empty pot."

Neither her mother or father were great cooks, but her mum's macaroni cheese was delicious: boiled Marshalls macaroni layered up with slices of tomato, grated cheese, chopped bacon and onions all over, then oven-baked until golden and gooey. Indeed, Kay still makes a version these days, albeit rather more elaborate.

Her parents were both members of the Communist Party, and with that, according to Kay, came perks: on Saturdays her dad would go to the party butcher and be given four steaks and four slices of square (beef) sausage for free.

When her parents went to Russia to be with fellow communists, Kay and her brother were left with family friends, apart from a couple of days when they stayed near Edinburgh. "I will never forget the gooseberry pie made by the little old man we were left with," she says. "This was a pie out of a fairy tale, just divine. It was really juicy and thick, and the flavours all burst in the mouth. There was a hole in the middle and the syrupy gooseberries oozed out."

Two of her mum's dishes that she loved then and now are rice pudding (which Kay liked to see emerge from the oven topped with a crusty skin, though she never liked to eat it) and apple sponge pudding, made in a square tin.

NEVER-FAIL APPLE SPONGE

Serves six

1.3kg/3lb cooking apples

2 tbsp sugar

For the sponge:

2 very large eggs (or 3 medium-sized ones)

tsp bicarbonate of soda

125g/4oz caster sugar

125g/4oz plain flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

Peel and core the apples and slice them very thinly, laying them in the bottom of a 23cm/9in square baking tin. Sprinkle with sugar.

For the sponge, beat the eggs and soda together well. Add the sugar very slowly and beat it in thoroughly (several minutes in a food mixer). Sift in the flour with the cream of tartar and fold in gently.

Pour this mixture over the apples. Put the tin in an oven preheated to 180C/350F/gas 4 for 15 to 20 minutes, until just set.

Sue says: I prefer to cook the apples first in a microwave bowl for a few minutes until just done, then drain off any excess liquid before laying them over the base of the tin.

Andy Murray

Tennis player

Born 1987

Andy Murray's first food memory is of tipping a plate of custard on his head when he was in his high chair. Apart from this trauma, he has good memories of food, as not only was his mum a good cook but, he says, "My gran is an awesome cook. She studied at domestic science college. When I was wee I used to tell her she was 'a great cooker'."

The favourite childhood dishes that Murray still craves are his gran's Greek shepherd's pie and his mum's fresh fruit salad. If the latter sounds more healthy than the choice of the average Scot, this is backed up by the fact he never eats food from the chip shop – so no fish suppers.

Murray learned the rudiments of cooking at home and some baking too. "I remember making little sponge cakes and covering them with icing and Smarties. Nowadays I can make pretty good pasta with tomato sauce; and I make great smoothies; my top one is strawberry, raspberry and blueberry with a bit of yoghurt and honey – tremendous!"

He has very special memories of Christmas dinners at his gran's home. "There was homemade turkey broth, roast turkey and all the trimmings, then fresh fruit salad and ice-cream. The only problem was that my gran gave us the same-sized portions from age five to 18, so Jamie and I were always starving. Eventually we had to tell her… and last year we got more than one chipolata each. Result!"

GREEK SHEPHERD'S PIE

Serves four

225g/lb onions

2 tbsp oil

450g/1lb minced beef

1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

175g/6oz tomatoes

butter, for greasing

450g/1lb potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

salt and pepper, to taste

For the white sauce:

50g/1oz butter

50g/1oz flour

400ml/14 fl oz milk

2 tbsp grated cheese

Slice the onions thinly and fry gently in the oil in a large pan until soft, adding the mince and parsley after a few minutes and stirring from time to time. Slice the tomatoes, add to the meat and cook gently for five minutes.

Butter a round souffl dish and arrange layers of overlapping potato slices on the bottom. Season with salt and pepper, and then spread a layer of meat and tomatoes, then another layer of potatoes.

In a pan, make a thick sauce blending the butter and flour, and then slowly adding the milk, stirring all the time. Season well and stir in the grated cheese. Pour over the potatoes and shake the dish so that the sauce penetrates.

Bake in an oven preheated to 180C/350F/gas 4 for 1 hours, or until the potatoes are tender. Serve with a green salad.

John Barrowman

Actor and musical performer

Born 1967

"Oh, I have lots of early food-related memories," says John Barrowman about his Glasgow childhood.