Thus Patrick Neill in 1813. Not only was this diet more wholesome than before, it was cheaper and so appealed to the Scots’ sober and frugal habits. It was also, as he noted, based on the garden: the ingredients of Scotch Broth – ‘the national dish’ – ‘are chiefly derived from these gardens’. These ingredients include leek, onion, cabbage or kale, turnip and carrot as well as pearl barley and, for those who could afford it, a piece of mutton or beef. Scotch or barley broth is still popular today.

However, the aversion of modern Scots to vegetables of any kind other than in broth and with the exception of potatoes is notorious. Recent studies document the significantly lower consumption of vegetables and fruit in Scotland today, compared to England. All social classes appear to share the habit of vegetable-avoidance, but the poorer you are the less likely you are to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day (and the less likely you are to be able to afford them).

Was Neill correct about the importance of vegetables in the rural diet in the early 1800s, and if so, what happened to it later? This chapter investigates the food and the meals of rural workers and their nutritional value, as they changed during the period.

‘Even at a nobleman's table we had only flesh meat of one kind, and no vegetables of any kind’, recalled John Wesley after his first visit to Scotland in 1762.