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A buttery by any other name: Group spells out why delicacy should be called a butterie

Butteries were included in the Ark of Taste in 2017 thanks to people like Wendy Barrie.
Butteries were included in the Ark of Taste in 2017 thanks to people like Wendy Barrie.

The humble rowie generates a lot of love in the north-east.

But try to pin down how the baked favourite should be referred to and that love quickly turns to ire.

Many an argument has been had over whether a buttery should instead be called a rowie or a roll.

Well, a local group has gone some way to solving the debate.

As part of their mission to get butteries onto a list of global heritage food a few years ago, the Slow Food Aberdeen team wrote up what they hoped was a definitive definition of the local delicacy.

A buttery by any other name? Slow Food Aberdeen says the correct name is butterie.

And in a blow to those bitter squabbles across the north-east, the team decided the correct name is neither buttery nor rowie.

What we really should be calling it is ‘butterie’.

That was the oldest known reference to butteries unearthed by the team, who back in 2017 eventually managed to get the rowie on to the Ark of Taste catalogue alongside all sorts of food stuffs from around the world.

And, as one of the team recalls, there was a reason for going back in time to get the correct name for a buttery.

“It was for an international audience, says Wendy Barrie, a co-author of the Ark of Taste application. “You have to give them a bit of the backstory, and then plump for something.”

Bulwark the buttery

Wendy concedes that it’s absolutely fine to call them a rowie or buttery. Both definitions are in the application.

However, the main thrust of the Ark of Taste submission, says Wendy, was to bulwark the traditional buttery against modern baking methods that swap out ingredients such as butter and lard for palm oil and other mass-produced fats.

To that end, Slow Food Aberdeen submitted with their Ark of Taste application a buttery recipe, which can be found below.

Wendy Barrie co-authored the Ark of Taste submission.

As industrialisation and changing consumption patterns affect the way we make and eat food, the recipe is Slow Food’s attempt to safeguard the buttery for future generations.

“I would describe it as laying down a marker,” says Wendy, who is also the author of the Scottish Food Guide to Scotland’s most ethical and sustainable places to eat. “We are saying that it you want to call a buttery a buttery in the future, then this is what it should be.”

Indeed, the Ark of Taste application includes a definition of a ‘butterie’ that few locals can argue with – a “distinctive crispy, flaky, flattened structure similar to a croissant and a pronounced buttery, salty taste”.

That sounds like a buttery to me. No matter what you call it.

For more information on Wendy Barrie’s Scottish Food Guide, click here. Wendy is preparing to release a new book on Swedish and Scottish food culture co-written with her Swedish husband.


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