Haggis

A dish of haggis

The haggis is a Scottish dish that is very spicy and has an intense flavour. It is normally made from lamb or sheep offal (lung, stomach, liver and heart) mixed with chopped onions, oatmeal, herbs and spices, all stuffed into a bag made from the animal's stomach and cooked for several hours..

History

This dish is traditionally eaten at Burns Dinner every 25th January, the day that Scotland's national poet Robert Burns is commemorated. Burns wrote the poem Address to a Haggis, which begins: Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place... and is recited as part of the celebratory dinner. In the poet's time haggis was a popular stew among the poor, as it used the parts of the sheep that would otherwise have been wasted.

Consumption and popular culture

Small haggis without cooking

In 1971 the United States made it illegal to import haggis from the United Kingdom, because of a ban on all foods containing sheep's lung, which constitutes 10-15% of the original recipe. The situation became even more complicated in 1989 when the importation of all types of beef and lamb from the United Kingdom into the United States was prohibited due to the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis. A spokesperson for the United States Department of Agriculture reported that the ban on the importation of meat products was being reviewed, but that the import ban on food containing sheep's lung would remain.

This dish is an object of amusement for many people. Those who ask a Scotsman about him rarely get a straight answer. The usual "answer" to what is a haggis is often: "A haggis is a small four-legged creature from the Scottish Highlands that has the limbs of a side shorter than the other. This is because they are well adapted to scampering up hills at a constant altitude, without having to ascend or descend. Wild haggis are often very aggressive. However, a haggis can easily be caught running up the hill in the opposite direction." Surprisingly, many tourists believe this humorous myth, and are perplexed to hear the truth.

The word haggis is also used in Scotland as a derogatory term: this is sometimes called people who are somewhat thick.