Scottish Haute Chewsine

23 September 2011

highlandcow As I write this the future of a major sustainable Scottish food producer is under threat. And yet this is a company which produces a healthy foodstuff in Scotland largely for local consumers (thus saving on food miles), the main ingredient being an organic, sustainably-managed product of our hills and glens. It is especially recommended for children and endorsed by the Royal Scottish College of Preventive Dentistry. Even if a last-minute saviour steps in it is a scandal and a stain on Scotland’s sustainability aspirations that this situation should have occurred.

The product I refer to is McCowans Highland Toffee, otherwise known as Scotland’s Haute Chewsine. McCowans is synonymous with the Highland cow logo. Andrew McCowan, whose creation first lifted spirits (and, according to some scurrilous and libellous detractors, extracted teeth) in the depressed thirties, started his working life herding Highland cows, or Hielan coos as he called them, on Perthshire farms. It is not known just how he discovered that boiled Hielan coos’ hoofs, with a wee dash of sugar, made a nourishing and tasty toffee. But discover it he did. Andrew came down from the hills, with his secret recipe and some hoofs in his sporran, to the low country to seek his fortune. And after working as a sweetie rep and a lemonade deliverer, he opened his own sweetie shop in the sweet and delightful village of Stenhousemuir, originally called Svenhousemuir because a horn-helmeted Viking retired looter called Muir built a house there, which he called Seven Gasworks Boulevard. Muir was not so hot on the spelling of English numbers.

Shortly before the First World War he started manufacturing his own confectionery (Andrew McCowan that is, not Muir who had died from a surfeit of lemmings on 12 July 903, while attending the International Troll-throwing Championship at Tifty Gourdas in Aberdeenshire. The Muir memorial, to the memory of Muir, can be seen today at the entrance to the village. (Tifty Gourdas can be reached by a turning off on the right side of the road from Aberdeen to Macduff, more specifically between Fyvie – home of the Bonnie Lass of the song – and King Edward, after which the potato was not named, though other Scottish villages have given their name to other varieties of the iconic tuber.)

Over the years following the introduction of the equally-iconic toffee McCowans launched a range of chewy bars including Wham, Lanky Larry, Lippy Chick, and the ever-popular Irn-Bru and Vimto (we’re still referring to chewy bars and not the iconic drinks of the same names). It is thought that Lanky Larry and Lippy Chick were so called after Andrew's mother in law and wife, respectively.

Today the most famous, successful and iconic of the McCowan foodstuffs, the iconic toffee bar with the iconic Hielan coo logo, is recognised by the Scottish Government’s Healthy Eating Agency as one of our five-a-day (five bars, not pieces). Unlike some other products promoted as contributing to the five-a-day, there is no problem about getting children to eat it – compare with broccoli, asparagus, sprouts, leeks (Oh, Mummy, Mummy they’re horrible, can’t I eat some nice fat slugs instead?). McCowan’s toffee has been endorsed, as previously mentioned, by a prestigious Scottish dental collective as the ideal foodstuff for children’s dental health, so much so that children who chew a toffee after every meal do not need to use toothpaste. As the catchy and becoming-iconic slogan put it, Toffees Every Day Keeps the Nasty Bristly Toothbrush Away, but only if they’re McGowan’s Highland Toffee.

For reasons which we don’t need to go into here McCowan’s in recent years has several times run into financial difficulties (I suspect sabotage by the Confederation of Hard Toothbrush Handweavers). However when the fate of McCowans and its 193 employees becomes clear I will update this article with the glad, or sad, tidings, whichever it may be.

Note: If you are sceptical about Tifty Gourdas I refer you to Ordnance Survey Landranger 29, Banff & Huntly, Portsoy & Turriff and map reference 77 40.

For more information about McCowans see company website. There are lots of stories in the media about the current problems facing the firm – just use Google if you want to check on these. For Scottish foods see the excellent Sustainable Scotland article: Food Food Glorious Scottish Food. You might also be interested in A Churning in the Orkneys (not to be confused with a problem in the Trossachs).

There's a very appropriate song for this story. The video link is below. But it's so appropriate that here's the lyrics of Ye Olde Toffee Shoppe.

I press my nose against the pane
of the little toffee shop
Day after day I save my pennies
to spend at the toffee shop

Come Saturday morn at nine o'clock
I stand on the cold stone street
A penny every day that I have saved
to buy myself some sweets

The nice little lady old and grey
with glasses and shawl
Gives love away to good little boys
who do as they are told

She's always telling stories
of her childhood days
She couldn't buy the things that I can
for families in those days

Imagine the sweets that I can buy
with six pennies of my own
I always take my time to choose
the sweets that I'll be taking home

Gobstoppers in my pockets
brown sugar in my hand
lollies you suck that last all day
and sugar that looks like sand