Haggis
Scotland's national dish is a sheep's stomach stuffed with its own offal, oats and spice, and it gets a poem, a supper and a ban on US shelves.
Published
Quick Facts
- What it is
- A savoury pudding of sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs), onion, oatmeal, suet and spices
- Traditional casing
- A sheep's stomach, though most haggis today is sold in an artificial casing
- Famous champion
- Robert Burns, whose 1786 poem 'Address to a Haggis' made it a national icon
- Big night
- Burns Night, 25 January, Burns's birthday
- Classic partners
- Neeps and tatties (swede and potatoes), plus a dram of whisky
- Early English recipes
- A 'hagese' recipe survives in a manuscript from around 1430, and Gervase Markham printed one in The English Hus-wife in 1615
- Vegetarian version
- Made with pulses, nuts, mushrooms and oats; widely sold across Scotland
- US status
- Traditional haggis made with sheep lung has been barred from import since 1971
The dish that Scotland may not have invented
Here's an awkward fact for the Burns Night faithful: English recipes for haggis go back to around 1430, when a dish called 'hagese' appears in a manuscript recipe collection, Liber Cure Cocorum. Gervase Markham printed another in The English Hus-wife in 1615. Cooks across Britain and Europe had been stuffing offal into animal stomachs for centuries before that. The idea is easy to understand. When an animal was killed, the perishable parts, the heart, liver and lungs, had to be eaten quickly. Chopped up, mixed with oats and fat, and sealed inside the stomach, they could be boiled into a portable, filling meal. The popular tale says drovers carried it on long journeys, or that it was made at the hunt for the freshly killed deer. It is a lovely story, though nobody can pin it to a date. What is certain is that Scotland took the dish and made it its own.
How a poem made it a national symbol
In 1786 Robert Burns published 'Address to a Haggis', greeting the pudding as the 'Great chieftain o' the puddin'-race'. It is a mock-heroic tribute, praising honest plain Scottish fare against the fancy French cooking of the day. Burns died in 1796, and a few years later friends gathered to remember him with a supper. Haggis was on the table, and the poem was read. That meal became the template for Burns Night every 25 January. The ritual is now fixed. The haggis is piped in, the poem is recited, and at the line about the knife, the haggis is sliced open with a flourish. Then come the whisky toasts and the neeps and tatties.
What's actually in it
The traditional recipe uses a sheep's pluck: heart, liver and lungs. The pluck is boiled, minced, and mixed with chopped onion, toasted oatmeal, suet, salt, pepper, and spices. The mixture is packed into the stomach and simmered for around three hours. The oatmeal is the secret of the texture. It soaks up the fat and juices, giving a crumbly, peppery, nutty result, closer to a rich stuffing than the sausage people often imagine. Most butchers now use a synthetic casing, which is easier to produce and has a longer shelf life. The flavour is similar, but a natural casing still has plenty of fans. Haggis is traditionally served with 'bashed neeps' (mashed swede) and 'champit tatties' (mashed potato), often with a whisky cream or peppercorn sauce.
Haggis in strange places
Haggis has escaped the supper table. Haggis pakora, haggis pizza and haggis-stuffed chicken breast, wrapped in bacon and known as chicken Balmoral, are all familiar sights in Scottish kitchens. Many a fry-up also has a slice of it. The fast-food chip shop even offers deep-fried haggis in batter, a Scottish treat for those who like their national dish with a crisp coating. Vegetarian haggis is now a mainstream product rather than an afterthought, with lentils, beans, nuts, mushrooms and oats standing in for the offal. Plenty of Scots eat it on Burns Night without feeling short-changed.
The wild haggis and the American ban
Ask a Scot about the wild haggis and you may be told it is a small creature with legs shorter on one side, so it can run round the steep hillsides in only one direction. The joke has fooled many tourists, and a surprising number of people have said they believed it. The real mystery is on the other side of the Atlantic. Since 1971 the United States has prohibited the import of food containing sheep lung, which rules out traditional haggis. Scottish producers have long campaigned to change the rule, and American-made versions without lung are sold instead. Meanwhile, the dish remains a source of national pride, ordered with a dram and eaten with a grin.
Notable people
- Robert Burns
- Gervase Markham
Keep exploring
Burns Night
Published
The first Burns supper was held by nine friends in Ayrshire, probably in 1801, and it was meant to be a one-off. Now it's a global night of haggis and verse.
Scotch Whisky
Published
Scotch whisky has to sit in an oak cask for at least three years, so every bottle on the shelf is a small act of patience, and some outlast their makers.
Robert Burns
Published
He was days from sailing to Jamaica when his first book sold out and changed his mind. Burns went on to write the song the world sings at midnight on New Year's Eve.