World acquires taste for Scotland's dish

Scotland’s most famous national dish has generated a great deal of interest around the world, not least for the ingredients used.

Traditional recipes contain sheep intestines mixed with oatmeal, spices, salt and pepper, served with neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes) and doused in whisky.

But no one did more to encourage its consumption than Scottish poet Robert Burns who in his mock-heroic poem To a Haggis, celebrated the “great chieftain o’ the puddin-race”.

Haggis was the staple diet of many Scots during the 18th century when many ate it at least three times a week.

But over the decades, haggis - which some people still think is a type of animal found in the Scottish wilderness - has become less popular.

After haggis achieved literary fame in the words of Burns in the 18th century it became synonymous with January 25, the date when it is traditionally eaten by Scots all over the world.

The celebration began to mark Burns’ birthday, when the eating of haggis become a certain ritual.

Celebrations began in the early 19th century at venues such as the Cleikum Inn, Peebles, where Sir Walter Scott was a regular diner.

Burns’ tribute to the haggis is recited at Burns suppers all over the world.

To an extent, it is because of Burns that haggis has retained such a Scottish identity.

One of the world’s leading haggis producers, Edinburgh-based Macsween, produces 500 tonnes of haggis every year.

The store now produces a variety of haggis-based produce including haggis canapes, large ceremonial varieties and a vegetarian version.

The food is so popular overseas the firm offers a gift-boxed haggis for mail order.

Although the dish is associated with Scotland, early references to haggis date back to ancient Greek texts.

Clarissa Dickson Wright in her book The Haggis, a Little History, claims the dish may well have come to Scotland in a Viking longboat around the ninth century.

Meanwhile, the first known English cookery book, The Form of Cury (cookery), written in 1390 by one of the cooks to King Richard II, contains a recipe for a dish called Afronchemoyle, which is in effect a haggis.

The ingredients were eggs, white breadcrumbs and finely diced sheep fat, seasoned with pepper and saffron and stuffed into a sheep’s tripe.