Haggis

Haggis was made in England from at least the 1420s through to the middle and late nineteenth century. Its supposedly unique Scottish character was invented as part of that country’s Romantic revival in the reign of George IV. Traditional English versions recorded from the seventeeth century onwards are based on oatmeal, mutton-suet, dried fruits and herbs such as parsley and thyme all cooked in a sheep’s stomach, and it is probable the medieval peasant versions were of similar composition.⁸ Those appearing in fifteenth-century recipe books contain richer and more delicate ingredients, such as eggs, breadcrumbs, cream and ground pork. To make them could apparently be a full-time occupation, the Catholicum Anglicum of 1483 translating ‘An Hagas maker’ as a tucetarius (sausage-maker). Texts such as the Liber Cocorum and The Noble Boke of Cookery describe chopping sheep’s hearts, parboiled gut and the like for their haggis, but since these ingredients are now generally unavailable, the following medieval recipes are more suitable for today’s use. The sheep stomachs originally used may be replaced by fine linen or muslin pudding-cloths or bags as specified in the ffraunt hemelle and leach Lombard recipes. These are of particular interest, since they show that the pudding-cloth was of early fifteenth century date, if not even earlier, rather than being a late-Tudor English invention, as often stated.