Scottish food historian calls for morning rolls to have protected status
Scotland is home to many much-loved and traditional food stuff - from potato scones to Lorne sausage. Now a Scots food historian is campaigning for morning rolls to have a worldwide recognised status.
Scottish food historian Peter Gilchrist, along with support from long-standing Scottish bakers Mortons, has launched a campaign to have the morning roll recognised by UNESCO.
Mr Gilchrist, who this week (Tues 26 May) hosted an event on the history of the morning roll, in collaboration with Moving Minds, wants to add “the act of ordering a morning roll” to UNESCO’s Living Heritage project 2027. This project encourages anyone to nominate cultural traditions that they believe should be protected.
Speaking to The National, Mr Gilchrist said: “The act of ordering a morning roll is as Scottish as a ceilidh or the Highland Games. We’ve had morning rolls for more than 500 years, but we don’t talk about them with the pride they deserve.
“When you ask people what Scottish food is, they’ll often say Aberdeen Angus beef, haggis, whisky, or even a deep-fried Mars bar. But those things aren’t on my plate every day. They’re not on most people’s plates every day.
“If you ask someone in Italy what their food is, they’ll tell you what they actually eat. They’re connected to their food culture in a way that we aren’t. We’ve been removed from ours. We have a relationship with poverty in Scotland, more so than down south. When food is fulfilling its most basic purpose, just keeping you alive, it’s very difficult to move past that and see excellence, craftsmanship, or heritage.”
Food, Mr Gilchrist said, is a celebration of our national identity that is a “powerful” reminder of our history and tradition. He said: It can be difficult to feel Scottish in ordinary life. Unless you’re waving a flag at a football match or dancing a dashing white sergeant, what can you actually do to feel Scottish?
“But if you can order a morning roll, and realise in that moment that you’re part of a chain of 500 years of Scots doing exactly the same thing, that’s powerful.”
At the event, Mr Gilchrist asked attendees to record their morning roll order as well as where they are from. He’s appealing for more people to get in touch with their family memories of the morning roll, especially those who have or had bakers in the family. These testimonies will create the “community consent" needed to achieve the UNESCO status.
He is also travelling around Scotland, visiting archives to find out more about the morning roll history. He said: “ I’m working with the Trades Hall of Glasgow to investigate their archive to try and find the earliest morning roll reference in Glasgow. I’m hoping to match or beat the 1601 reference in Edinburgh.”
The history of the morning roll is important but Mr Gilchrist said what’s inside is also part of our tradition. “The choices are what make it cultural. People and their family dynamics and their family orders and their friends' orders, that's what creates that sense of identity. It’s through those choices that we tell ourselves who we are and where we're from. People are desperate to share those memories. That’s what tells me this matters.”
It’s this rich history and links to places and real people that will help Scotland no longer be the “butt of the joke” when it comes to our food heritage.
He said: “We make ourselves the butt of the joke, too. But if an authority like Unesco says this matters, maybe it allows us to start taking ourselves more seriously.”
The campaign has the support of Scottish bakers Mortons, who are known in Glasgow for their crispy morning rolls. A Mortons spokesperson said: “The team at Mortons rolls are delighted to hear the Scottish Morning Roll could potentially be recognised by Unesco.
“Mortons is the original branded crispy roll in Scotland and we wholeheartedly support Peter Gilchrist in his quest, and of course we would be delighted to be involved in this process if needed.”
Mr Gilchrist has been a keen campaigner for recognising and celebrating the importance of our food heritage. In 2025 he was part of a group who launched World Bannock Day, which took place in March 2025 to raise awareness of author and cultural figure, Florence Marian McNeill.
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Speaking at the time of the launch of World Bannock Day, Mr Gilchrist said: “Bannocks are the perfect food to celebrate Florence with.
"There are dozens of recipes that span from crispy oat cakes to fruited soda breads and until relatively recently, bannocks were served at nearly every meal.
"Every family had a recipe. There were special bannocks made for yule, Hogmanay, and for the changing of the seasons. Every region had their own special recipes or bannock rituals. It was something that used to unite us and now they’re almost extinct.
“Making a bannock is an act as Scottish as a dashing white sergeant, drinking Irn Bru or standing in line for a free prescription.
"It’s something that the majority of Scotland made. It’s not a deep fried mars bar or a tartan tin of shortbread; it was real ordinary working class life.
“I think Florence would have loved that we are using World Bannock Day to celebrate her, although I suspect she’d hate the attention.”
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