DR WHO star Karen Gillan has given her fans a lesson on Edinburgh’s famous chip-shop sauce.
The 27-year old redhead wrote on Twitter: “Scotland tomorrow. First thing I’m doing is buying a pile of chips with chippy sauce. Edinburgh folk: you know what I’m talking about.”
For years, takeaways in the capital have asked customers “Salt and sauce?” when selling chips, and served up food smothered in the runny brown sauce, which is diluted with water or vinegar.
The sauce is widely available in Edinburgh and Fife but is almost unheard-of elsewhere.
Gillan, who starred alongside David Tennant as Dr Who’s sidekick Amy Pond, showed she is a huge fan of the delicacy, despite being born in the Highland city of Inverness.
One Twitter user asked: “Serious question from all the Americans. What’s chippy sauce, please? 🙂
To which Gillan replied: “The greatest sauce in existence.”
Some Scots were reluctant to give up the secret, with one saying: “Sorry, we’re not allowed to reveal the secret to Americans.”
But others gave the game away, with BrianIndian63 writing: “ Haha it’s a thing local to the Edinburgh area and it’s like brown sauce, only slightly thinner.”
Confusion and debate still raged however. Brian Mack wrote: “Chippy sauce? You mean vinegar?”
Veridis Quo replied: “No, in Edinburgh it’s a combo of what you’ll know as Brown Sauce + Vinegar. It is the devils work.”
But Gillan, whose Twitter tagline is “Searching for Irn Bru” was mostly cheered on by fans of the snack.
David Plant wrote: “You don’t need to come from north of the border to appreciate the food of the gods, Karen.”
And another Twitter user, called Steve, wrote: “YES. Screw those other chippies and their crappy vinegar. Enjoy my city!”
Two years ago, a Glasgow-born Edinburgh resident threatened to take a city chippy to Trading Standards claiming racial discrimination because brown sauce was free but a sachet of tomato ketchup cost 25p.
Gillan now lives in Los Angeles. In April, Hollywood director James Gunn confirmed she would be reprising her role as blue-skinned villain Nebula in his Marvel sci-fi movie Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
