"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote in message
...
I've always accepted that all around the Levant and Mediterranean
littoral, man has used all that barely leaven flat or nearly so
bread with far greeter ingenuity that the Scots ever were able to
lend to oat cakes. If ever there was evidence that food travels
better than folks, a trip to the Indian subcontinent where the
locals likewise work magic in, within and atop thin breads.

True, but why didn't the idea travel to northern Europe? There seems
no obvious technological, resource or ideological barrier that would
have made cooking flatbread with a filling impossible north of Lyon.


,,,,All those sheep's paunches sitting around waiting to be stuffed left no
time for filling/topping bread....

I suspect that climate had something to do with eat, that holding and
consuming a topped or filled bread is a warm weather pastime, unworkable in
dank, chill Northern climes, where the locals were forced to dine while
crouch huddled beneath stone walls to keep their biscuits warm (and to keep
the rain off...)

Think of the advantages available to the Scots. Didn't even have to collect
water from a nearby burn to mix their oat cakes. Simply cup one's hands and
wait a moment for rain to fall...