Are you really doctors? As in medical practitioners? Yes. We are UK registered medical practitioners. Between us we spent more than 40 years working for the NHS (variously in Psychiatry, General Practise and Occupational Health) but we've both chosen to go on to do other things. One of us still practises, the other works outside medicine - both maintain our registration in good standing with the GMC.
So if you're medical doctors, are you saying Scottish Tablet is healthy and good for you? Er, no. We're definitely not saying that. There's certainly a substantial body of evidence against excess consumption of high calorie, particularly high sugar, foods. But, mostly, diet and ill-health is around patterns and quantities of consumption rather than specific foods. For some people however, diabetics in particular, Scottish Tablet is not recommended - and we make that clear in our Confection Information Leaflet and the 'indications' for use. We discourage excess consumption and in many ways packaging in a prescription-style box may emphasise to those eating our tablet the need to consume with care. Giving people pause for thought about whether they are consuming too much is an approach which is not taken by most confectionary. In any case, so long as you look after your teeth and body generally, a little of what makes you smile is probably good for you. There's a lot of 'scunner' about, an occasional wee bit of something 'descunnerant' may be a good thing - but we're not telling you to take it.
How do you make your tablet? We take sugar, evaporated (not condensed) milk, butter and the rest.. well, is a secret. :-) Sorry.
What about any additives or flavourings in your tablet? Nope. Just a mix of sugar, evap.milk and butter. Some manufacturers add other ingredients to extend shelf life - we're only interested in fresh tablet. The only thing we add is care, (and comedy), because our intention is to make you smile.
Can you make some vegan tablet? No - we're sorry about that. Actually we've tried a lot of recipes so far (working our way through vegan block, crisco, vitalite as the fat, and through oat-milk, soy-milk, coconut-milk etc as the 'milk'). No recipe we have tried has been good enough for us to want to put the name 'tablet' to it. We have managed to replicate the texture by adding additional vegan ingredients, but we haven't been able to replicate the flavour. It's a work in progress but even if we can make a vegan look/taste-alike we're not sure whether it should be called 'tablet'. Maybe it would be better for the vegan confection to carry its own name.
How do I get some? Are you a company? Talk to us (email). No, we aren't currently doing this commercially and aren't set up for that. We are thinking about it though - hence this website and the informal outing at a neighbourhood festival. The recipe has been used for years at fundraisers and we've made it for friends etc. A lot of smiles have been triggered with it...
