Haggis

Haggis has been around since time immemorial. The notion of preparing a savory dish by boiling or steaming minced ingredients in the stomach or intestine of an animal must have occurred to humans very shortly after the discovery of fire and of cooking.The oldest recipe on record for a Haggis comes from Apicius (80BC - 40AD), the Roman gourmet who wrote the oldest surviving cook book.

Haggis resembles other stuffed intestines, otherwise known as sausages, of which it is one of the largest types. Vegetarian recipes also exist, and the best of these make an extremely tasty haggis. However it differs in the following ways: it uses sheep offal instead of pig offal and oatmeal instead of cornmeal; it is a sausage rather than a meat loaf; and it is boiled instead of being baked. As a result, the appearance and the flavour are very different.

Haggis is traditionally served with the Burns supper on January 25th, when Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns, is commemorated. He wrote the poem Address to a Haggis, which starts "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place...." During Burns' lifetime haggis was a popular dish for the poor, since it made use of parts of a sheep that would otherwise have been wasted.

Haggis is widely available in supermarkets in Scotland all the year round, and the cheaper brands are normally packed in artificial casings, rather than stomachs, just as the cheaper brands of sausages are no longer stuffed into animal intestines. Some supermarket haggis is largely made from pigs', rather than, sheeps', offal. In addition, practically all Scottish fish and chips shops will sell their customers a haggis supper. This consists of a small single portion haggis dipped in batter and deep fried with chips; it provides a hot, filling, high-energy meal for a cold winter's day. There are also fast-food shops that sell haggis burgers, with a patty of fried haggis on a bun.

Since many countries' food safety laws outlaw some of the ingredients in haggis (for example, United States law forbids the sale of any animal's lungs for human consumption), expatriate Scots and Scots descendants overseas have been known to engage in haggis smuggling to obtain true Scottish haggis.