A Courier Country favourite that started out as farm workers’ food

The Forfar Bridie reportedly originated from Margaret Bridie of Glamis, who sold the meat pasties at Forfar’s Buttermarket in the 18th Century, a location now home to the less notable modern-day feature of town centre public loos.

Genealogical research confirmed a Margaret Bridie lived around that time and she is buried in Glamis kirkyard, where her headstone makes reference to the product.

Bridies were traditionally eaten by farm workers and made by wives for their husbands working in the fields – the size and shape convenient to carry and eat on the move with the pastry case insulating the contents and sturdy enough to retain its shape without splitting or cracking and keeping the filling from dirty hands.

Records reveal Jolly’s of Queen Street in Forfar was making Forfar Bridies in the 1840s and James Mclaren & Sons has been making them since 1893 – the business is now run by the fifth generation of the family but the original James Mclaren served his apprenticeship at Jolly’s so had been making bridies much earlier than then.

The Mclaren and Saddler names have become synonymous with the savoury down the generations and still use the traditional methods to produce plain and onion versions of it.

Peter Pan author JM Barrie wrote about the Forfar Bridie in his 1896 novel Sentimental Tommy, an account of a little boy growing up in a town called Thrums, based on the writer’s birthplace of Kirriemuir.

Picture: Gareth Jennings. The Forfar Bridie has an 18th Century provenance.