Granny Morrison's Stovies — The Nearly Comptons Version

This is a stovies recipe. It is also, finally, the right one.

The original post — Agnes Isabella's Monday Plate — is an honest attempt to reconstruct what I ate at 10 Mill Street, Montrose, in the early 1960s. It gets close. It always got close. But something was missing, and I couldn't identify it from sense memory alone.

My sister solved it on a sentimental journey to Montrose to say farewell to Uncle Bert. She sent a photograph of a packet of Comptons Gravy Salt and one line: 'This is why your stovies don't taste like Granny Morrison's. X'

She was right.

The Missing Ingredient

Comptons Gravy Salt has been manufactured since the early 1920s — salt, cornflour, and a caramel powder that darkens stock, adds a faint treacly depth, and thickens everything it touches just enough. It was a Scottish kitchen cupboard staple. Agnes Isabella would have used it without thinking. I hadn't thought of it in sixty years.

Nearly Comptons is the homemade version — the same three ingredients, made at home, and now a permanent fixture at Casa Adora. ½ tsp dissolved in the stock before it goes in. That's all it takes.

The Leftover Potato Recipes Angle

This scottish stovies recipe is built on leftover potatoes — already cooked, already cooled. That's not a shortcut. It's the point. Cooled cooked potatoes have significantly more resistant starch than freshly boiled ones — the starch retrogrades as they cool, changing structure in a way that makes them genuinely better for your gut and, in this dish, better for the texture too. They hold their shape through the long, slow cook without disappearing entirely.

Agnes Isabella's stovies were Monday food. Sunday's potatoes, Sunday's dripping, Sunday's stock. The leftovers were the dish. This version keeps that logic intact.

The Scottish Stovies Recipe

No meat in the dish. No onion — Agnes Isabella never used one. White pepper, not black. The carrots go in soft and stay soft — that's correct, not a problem to solve.

The Nearly Comptons goes into the stock before it goes into the pan. It distributes evenly through the whole cook, darkening the liquid and giving the final reduction exactly the depth and colour that's been missing every time I've made this without it.

Ingredients

(Serves 1, generously)

The stovies

• 400g leftover cooked potatoes, cooled, sliced into rounds roughly 1cm thick
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
• 2 tbsp beef dripping
• 300ml dark beef stock
• ½ tsp Nearly Comptons Gravy Salt, dissolved in the stock
• Sea salt and white pepper

Method

Build the base:
Melt the dripping in a heavy-based pan over a medium-low heat. Add the potatoes and carrots and turn them in the fat until well coated. Dissolve the Nearly Comptons in the stock, then pour it in — it should come roughly halfway up the potatoes. Season with salt and white pepper.

Cook low and slow:
Cover tightly and cook over the lowest heat you can manage for 35–40 minutes, checking occasionally. The potatoes will begin to soften further at the edges. The carrots will go completely soft — that's the dish working as it should. If the liquid reduces too quickly, add a splash more stock or water.

Reduce to sticky:
Remove the lid for the final 10–15 minutes and allow the remaining liquid to reduce until it coats everything in a dark, glossy gravy. Don't rush this. This is the moment the dish becomes itself.

Serve:
Straight from the pan into a deep plate. A thick slice of bread if you have it. Nothing else required.

Chef's Notes

The resistant starch in cooled leftover potatoes is a genuine benefit — the starch retrogrades as the potatoes cool, becoming prebiotic rather than digestible. Monday food was nutritionally smarter than anyone knew.

Agria is my go-to potato in Spain. Edzell Blue was Agnes Isabella's — a Scottish heritage variety with skin the colour of a bruise, not available here.

White pepper rather than black. It was standard in Scottish kitchens of that era.

The stock matters more than almost anything else. A weak stock won't reduce to anything worth eating. Use a good one, or reduce a lighter stock hard before you start.

Do not attempt this with olive oil.

This stovies recipe is featured in my Scottish Recipes hub, a collection of Scottish dishes from Casa Adora and beyond, and in my Potato Recipes collection.

It also features in my Resistant Starch Recipes hub — Cook It, Cool It, Use Again.

It also features in my Gut Health Recipes hub — real food from a rural Andalucían kitchen, built around fermented foods, high-fibre pulses, wholegrains and prebiotic-rich ingredients.

Find more recipes and food adventures here.

Wonky photos, proper food, genuine adventures — The Flexible Chef