The next time you are in the dentist’s chair going “aaaaaagh” and are told you need a filling – blame James VI. Why? The Stewarts loved sweet stuff and imported sugar from as far away as the Indies or Morocco, so their cooks could conjure up all sorts of culinary delights. The royal kitchens at the castle had a ‘confectionery’ for making such things – and some were spectacular. At the baptismal celebrations of James VI’s son, Prince Henry, sugar sculptures of castles, lions rampant and ships were presented at the beginning of the banquet.

The Stewart court used sugar in other ways as well, such as preserving fruit, dressing vegetables and even for medical remedies. It’s no wonder that toothache was a big problem amongst the wealthy. Where the royal court led others soon followed, so the fashion for delicious, sugar-sweetened foods spread among the affluent. Poorer folk had to wait for prices to drop before they could afford to assault their dentistry in this way.

As a former chef, I’ve been absolutely fascinated to come and work at the castle and to start researching how the Stewart royal court used to dine. It was a pretty challenging task for the kitchen staff to serve up meals fit for the monarch day after day. And remember, there were no electric fridges and freezers or other modern kitchen gadgetry to help (not much hygiene either). There was also no way to have out-of-season or perishable foreign produce flown in from abroad, as we do today. Ironically, this meant that chefs had to do what we now make a great virtue of – source the best local and generally organic, free-range produce.

There was freshly-hunted venison, pheasant caught by trained hawks, salmon fished from the Tay and dressed crabs from Crail. Delicious and healthy stuff. The court also loved to tuck into dishes that are less popular these days, such as pigeons from the royal doocots, and some which would cause outrage on a modern Scottish menu – such as porpoise with oatmeal.

While the Stewart love of sweet stuff has been a mixed blessing, the royal family did set some very good examples. Fruits and berries were grown in the royal gardens at Stirling and brought from lands near Perth. So today’s soft fruit farmers may have some reason to be thankful to James VI – as one of his weaknesses was for succulent strawberries.

Sandy Easson, Castle Steward