Coorie Corner: Spring 2026
Rhubarb cordial, slow bread, and a Scots word worth keeping.
A rhubarb and ginger cordial
The rhubarb at Ladhope is two feet high already. This is the easiest cordial you’ll ever make, and it’s the colour of a Borders sunset — somewhere between rose pink and amber, depending on how much ginger you put in. Keep it in the fridge and add a splash to cold sparkling water; or, if it’s a Friday and the week has been long, to a measure of gin and a wedge of lime.
You’ll need:
• 500g forced or garden rhubarb, chopped into 2cm pieces
• 300g caster sugar
• A thumb of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
• The juice of one lemon
• 400ml water
Put everything in a heavy pan, bring slowly to a simmer, and cook gently for twenty minutes until the rhubarb has collapsed completely. Strain through a fine sieve or a piece of muslin into a clean bottle — don’t press the pulp, just let it drip, or your cordial will go cloudy. (The leftover pulp is delicious stirred into yoghurt the next morning.) Keeps in the fridge for two weeks. Makes about half a litre.
A loaf worth the time
If you’ve ever had a pastry from Twelve Triangles — they have a beautiful little shop on Market Square in Melrose, twenty five minutes from Ladhope, and four more across Edinburgh — you’ll understand why I’m sending you to their cookbook. Emily Cuddeford and Rachel Morgan have been baking slow-fermented sourdough and pastries from a tiny bakery in Brunswick Street since 2015. They named themselves after a line from a Dylan Thomas poem (A Grief Ago). They now run six shops, receive several tons of flour a week, and have just published a cookbook that gives away — properly, generously — the methods that built their business.
The book includes their sourdough principles in full: the cold/slow fermentation cycle, the three or four-day rhythm, the hand-shaping, the rejection of additives and improvers. It is, genuinely, the best home sourdough teaching in print right now, and the kindness of releasing the recipes feels very of-this-region — Borders generosity, written down.
The book is available from their shops or to order online from twelvetriangles.co.uk. Their Melrose café also does sit-in. Try a slice of their hazelnut and sourdough frangipane tart — it’s made with leftover breadcrumbs, and it is extraordinary.
Scots word of the issue
Gloaming (n.) — the soft fading light of evening, between sunset and full dark. The English have twilight, which is fine; the Scots have gloaming, which is better. The word comes from Old English glōm, meaning twilight, and it has the sound of a slow exhale in it. Best used in a sentence like: “We sat out in the gloaming and watched the bats come in over the river.”
From The Scullery
Letters from the Scullery is a bi-monthly publication from The Scullery at Ladhope Farmhouse, a boutique one-bedroom cottage in the Yarrow Valley, Scottish Borders. Join the Inner Circle at the-scullery.com for early access to dates and Inner Circle rates on midweek stays.