The Legend of Great Granny Johnstone’s Mince and Tattie Soup

The recent pandemic was undoubtedly a difficult and challenging time. For many, it was fearful. For some, it was fatal. Isolation from friends and family was tough for everyone. At the start of 2021, we were all dealing with a cancelled Christmas and the arrival of a new strain of the virus. It was at that time that I found myself reflecting on a pandemic past and a story from my family’s history. It too is a story set against a backdrop of difficult and challenging times. A tale of war. A tale of hope. A tale of soup.

Most families have recipes that are passed down through the generations. My family is no exception. Whilst we are not a huge family, we do like our food, so perhaps we have a disproportionately high number of these: Granny Gardiner’s pancakes, Auntie Margaret’s Mars Bar Cake, and of course, Great Granny Johnstone’s Mince and Tattie Soup.

At the outbreak of World War I, the Johnstone Family lived near the village of Straiton on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Some time into the war, a distressed young lad, a soldier, knocked on their door. He had run away from the nearby barracks at Glencorse. In those days, he would have been described as ‘shell shocked’, what we now recognise as suffering from PTSD. If caught, he would have faced court martial and likely been shot for desertion. Despite the risks to herself for aiding a deserter, Great Granny took him in. She fed him some soup from the pot on the swee, gave him some civvie clothing belonging to one of her boys and hid his army plaid in a kist in the house, later disposing of it at the nearby lime works. No doubt some of her compassion for this poor boy was borne from the fact that her own boys, her sons, were themselves away fighting in the war.

Come 1917 her boys were lucky enough to make it home from the war, which, unfortunately, did not end all wars. So, ‘yay’ says Great Granny, ‘war is over, weans are home, happy days’. Then along comes Spanish Flu, COVID-19 the prequel. Unfortunately, one of the boys had inadvertently brought this live grenade home with him, and, boom, the deadly flu virus exploded in the Johnstone household. But here’s the good bit. With no NHS, no vaccine, and seemingly no hope, Great Granny did what she had to do. She broke out the soup pot and made a huge batch of mince and tattie soup to fortify the family. The afflicted recovered from the flu, and the healthy avoided contracting it. Spanish Flu, nil. Great Granny, one.

As children, whenever my sisters or I had a cold or a sore throat, my mum would make us her Granny’s mince and tattie soup, just as her mother had done for her. I did the same for my girls. And like most legendary tales, there is undoubtedly an element of truth in the myth that the soup had medicinal qualities and the ability to cure Spanish Flu. Nutritionally speaking it’s sound: protein from the mince, carbohydrate from the spuds and a good supply of vitamin C from carrots and leeks. Not to mention it has the latest trendy superfood, beef broth, as its base. It also tastes bloody good.

So in early 2021, following the death of my lovely Auntie Margaret, she of Mars Bar Cake notoriety, I found myself looking through old photos and reflecting on this family story. I decided it was a positive, pertinent tale, worth sharing with some of my good friends. I broke out my own soup pot and made a big batch of mince and tattie soup. In true COVID style, I left them each a box of soup on their doorstep, along with a typed up copy of the story behind it. As friends, we couldn’t be together physically, but we could be together in soup. Of course I couldn’t say for sure, but I’m fairly certain that soup kept us all clear of the virus until our vaccines were administered later that year. Which surely goes to show…where there’s soup, more specifically where there's mince and tattie soup, there’s hope.

Disclaimer: Mince and tattie soup is not a substitute for vaccination or social distancing in times of pandemic.