haggis-msg - 12/1/18 Scottish haggis recipes. comments on haggis. Both meat and non-meat items cooked in a sheep's stomach or similar container. NOTE: See also the files: sausages-msg, organ-meats-msg, lamb-mutton-msg, fd-Scotland-msg, pig-to-sausag-art, livestock-msg, butchering-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ From: LIB_JLC at vax1.utulsa.edu To: markh at risc Subject: haggis recipes Date: 1/9/98 Here's a few recipes: one is quite edible, one may be of interest if you have access to game, and one is traditional. They are from THE SCOTS KITCHEN: ITS TRADITIONS AND LORE WITH OLD-TIME RECIPES by F. Marian McNeill (London: Blackie & Son Ltd., 1947), a legacy from my husband's Campbell grandmother. You can usually get suet, and sometimes marrow, from a butcher. If you can't acquire marrow, substitute an equal amount of butter. As you can imagine, haggis is quite fatty, and may be a bit rich for modern tastes. The fats do help the assemblage hold together, so if you're going to cut the amount of fat, be sure not to cut back too much. HAGGIS ROYAL [From the Minutes of Sederun of the Cleikum Club - that's what the book says, I've no idea what it means] Ingredients: Mutton, suet, beef-marrow, bread-crumbs or oatmeal, anchovies, parsley, lemon, pepper, cayenne, eggs, red wine. [The anchovies and cayenne are, no doubt, optional] Three pounds of leg of mutton chopped, a pound of suet chopped, a little, or rather as much beef-marrow as you can spare, the crumb of a penny loaf (our own nutty-flavoured browned oatmeal, by the way, far better)[I'd say 1 to 1 1/2 cups of crumbs or toasted oatmeal], the beat yolks of four eggs, a half-pint of red wine, three mellow fresh anchovies boned, minced parsley, lemon grate (grated peel), white pepper, crystals of cayenne to taste - crystals alone ensure a perfect diffusion of the flavour - blend the ingredients well, truss them neatly in a veal caul [stomach], bake in a deep dish, in a quick oven, and turn out. [I'd suggest 375F for 1/2 hour, then turn down to 350F till done] Serve hot as fire, with brown gravy, and venison sauce. DEER HAGGIS (From the Kitchen of a Highland Chief) Ingredients: Deer's heart, liver, and suet, coarse oatmeal, onions, black pepper, salt, paste [pastry] Boil the heart and a piece of the liver of a deer. When cold, mince the heart very fine and grate a teacupful of the liver. To these add a teacupful of coarse oatmeal, previously toasted in the oven or before the fire, three finely chopped onions, a tablespoonful of salt, and a strong seasoning of black pepper. Mix all well together. Put into a pudding-basin, cover with paste as for a beef-steak pudding, and boil for four hours. Serve in the basin, very hot. [Basically a top-crust pie] [The cooking method, I think, is akin to that of cooking pate': you put the dish either into a double-boiler, or set the dish into a larger pan of water to boil, or set it into a large pan of water and put it in the oven, as you would a custard.] MEG DODD'S HAGGIS [the traditional style everyone thinks of] "The exact formula by which the Prize Haggis was prepared at the famous Competition of Haggises held in Edinburgh, when the Cleikum Haggis carried the stakes" Ingredients: Sheep's pluck [lungs, heart, and liver] and paunch, beef-suet, onions, oatmeal, pepper, salt, cayenne, lemon or vinegar. Clean a sheep's pluck thoroughly. Make incisions in the heart and liver to allow the blood to flow out, and parboil the whole, letting the windpipe lie over the side of the pot to permit the dishcarge of impurities; the water may be changed after a few minutes' boiling for fresh water. A half-hour's boiling will be sufficient; but throw back the half of the liver to boil till it will grate easily; take the heart, the half of the liver, and part of the lights [lungs], trimming away all skins and black-looking parts, and mince them together. Mince also a pound of good beef- suet and four or more onions. Grate the other half of the liver. Have a dozen of small onions peeled and scalded in two waters [twice parboiled] to mix with this mince. Have ready some finely ground oatmeal, toasted slowly before the fire for hours, till it is of a light brown colour and perfectly dry. Less than two teacupfuls of meal will do for this quantity of meat. Spread the mince on a board and strew the meal lightly over it, with a high seasoning of pepper, salt, and a little cayenne, first well mixed. Have a haggis bag (i.e. a sheep's paunch) perfectly clean, and see that there be no thin part in it, else your whole labour will be lost by its bursting. Some cooks use two bags, one as an outer case. Put in the meat with a half-pint of good beef gravy, or as much strong broth as will make it a very thick stew. Be careful not to fill the bag too full, but allow the meat room to swell; add the juice of a lemon or a little good vinegar; press out the air and sew up the bag, prick it with a large neelde when it first swells in the pot to prevent bursting; let it boil slowly for three hours if large. "This is a genuine Scotch haggis; the lemon and cayenne may be omitted, and instead of beef-gravy, a little of the broth in which the pluck is parboiled may be taken. A finer haggis may be made by parboiling and skinning sheep's tongues and kidneys, and substituting these minced for the most of the lights, and soaked bread or crisped crumbs for the toasted meal. There are, moreover, sundry modern refinements on the above recipe - such as eggs, milk, pounded biscuit, &c. - but these, by good judges, are not deemed improvements. Some cooks use the small fat tripes, as in making lamb's haggis." Dunstana Talana the Violet Northkeep, Ansteorra Jennifer Carlson Tulsa, Oklahoma JLC at vax2.utulsa.edu From: ANDERSJC at howdy.princeton.EDU (JANET ANDERSON - Ext 6639) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Haggis Date: 27 Mar 1996 13:37:19 -0500 Organization: Princeton University My home parish (outside Philadelphia) used to have "theme refreshments" on appropriate Sundays, i.e. on St. David's Day we would have Welsh delicacies, and on one St. Andrew's Day somebody provided a (canned) haggis for those who were brave enough to try it. I love exotic foods and figured it couldn't possibly be as bad as its reputation, so I tried it. I was wrong. It was. Once was enough to last me for the rest of my life. Dorigen Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: nhanger at windhaven.mv.com (Nancy C. Hanger) Subject: Re: Haggis Organization: MV Communications, Inc. Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 15:56:12 GMT "ld. Ian Gourdon/ MKA: Dan Stratton" wrote: >> Mors Plumatahaggis, lovely haggis, beautiful haggis... >haggis, like sex, is wonderful when it's good, and when it's not so good, >it's still pretty good...when served with the proper scotch. still let's >not forget the third ingredient of a really proper session of the >'eating of the haggis', which is mashed 'neeps', eh? Ian Gourdon =Tatties= and neeps. And good whiskey. (Always good whiskey....) And, as someone who despises liver to the point of gagging when it is even mentioned, I might add, I =adore= good haggis. Good haggis should be peppery and dry and a delight to the senses. Some of the best I've ever had was from a small family butcher's in Inverness. I'm obviously very lucky not to ever have had bad haggis--I hate to think of the consequences for my hosts . I think the lesson here is: don't eat haggis outside of Scotland. But we already knew that, didn't we? --Branwyn Mwrheyd-- From: dickeney at access1.digex.net (Dick Eney) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis Date: 29 Mar 1996 21:50:52 -0500 Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA JANET ANDERSON - Ext 6639 wrote: >My home parish (outside Philadelphia) used to have "theme >refreshments" on appropriate Sundays, i.e. on St. David's Day we >would have Welsh delicacies, and on one St. Andrew's Day somebody >provided a (canned) haggis for those who were brave enough to try it. >I love exotic foods and figured it couldn't possibly be as bad as its >reputation, so I tried it. > >I was wrong. It was. Once was enough to last me for the rest of my >life. > Jackson has the gout. Tamar reports that the haggis she had over an open fire in the mountains overlooking Loch Ness was quite good. And so was the one I had as an appetizer in Glasgow one evening, but maybe that was the mild mustard sauce... |---------Master Vuong Manh, C.P., Storvik, Atlantia---------| |----------------(dickeney at access.digex.net)-----------------| From: ejpiii at delphi.com Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis Date: Fri, 29 Mar 96 22:12:50 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info at delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Well, all the Haggis I tried in UK was great, much to my surprise. I am normally into really spicy stuff, but it was good. All I have had over here was pretty bad though. Eddward From: corun at access4.digex.net (Corun MacAnndra) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis Date: 2 Apr 1996 06:55:34 -0500 Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA William Underhill wrote: >Nancy C. Hanger (nhanger at windhaven.mv.com) wrote: >>And, as someone who despises liver to the point of gagging when it is >>even mentioned, I might add, I =adore= good haggis. Good haggis should >>be peppery and dry and a delight to the senses. Some of the best I've >>ever had was from a small family butcher's in Inverness. I'm obviously >>very lucky not to ever have had bad haggis--I hate to think of the >>consequences for my hosts . >> >>I think the lesson here is: don't eat haggis outside of Scotland. But >>we already knew that, didn't we? > > Oh, say not so, milady! I have had good, in fact, excellent haggis right >here (in An Tir). Granted, it was home-made, not boughten, but it was >definitely outside of Scotland. Of course, there was cock-a-leekie pie, >taties and bashed 'neeps, as well as a 40 oz. bottle of Glenmorangie for >after. We even made a point of reading "To A Haggis", which, though not >period, certainly lent to the general "Scottishness" of the occasion (not >an event, a family birthday party). I have been told that there is a law in Scotland that states that haggis served in restaurants must be made in the intestine rather than the stomach. So what you are getting is, in essence, a sausage. The intestine casing would not have the same flavour as the stomach (or tripe as it's called). I can't verify that this law is on the books, and I don't even recall who told me at this point. But if true, then it would slant one's opinion of haggis. Now I will add that I've never been to Scotland (though that will change), and have no desire to eat haggis in any form. My Lady, who is in Scotland now, had occsion to attend the annual Robert Burns dinner at St. Andrews. The traditional meal is haggis, and she claims it is vile. Still in all, it's a matter of personal taste. In service, Corun =============================================================================== Corun MacAnndra | Dark Horde by birth | Gort, Klaatu mirabile dictu Moritu by choice | from The Day The Earth Spoke Latin From: s.krossa at aberdeen.ac.uk (Sharon Krossa) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 09:29:45 +0000 Organization: Phuture PhuDs [My apologies if this is rather a late contribution to this thread: I've been away from my net connection for many weeks except periodic visits just long enough to download but not to post replies!] jan.frelin at pub.MIL.SE (jan frelin) wrote: >Tracy replied: > >I beg to differ. On a visit to Edinburgh, we crashed with a couple of the >locals of the shire of Harpelstane, and they invited us for a dinner of >Haggis (with 'nips and 'taters) and malt whisky. The whisky helped, I'm >sure, but I found the dinner quite pleasant. I can recommend to anyone! It's neeps and tatties... ;-) but oh, how I long for tater-tots! (I wanna go HOOOOOMMMMMMEEEEE!) If you like sausages, you will very probably like haggis. If you don't, well, you've got no taste! ;-) Haggis is simply the Scottish varient on the sausage theme. No more, no less. Regarding canned haggis, or any haggis really: You need to read the label carefully. A surprising number of canned haggis and other haggises (ie, the ones that come with ingrediants tags) are made with beef, without any sheep, but including other strange things that have no place being in a haggis. So read the label, make sure it's made with real sheep! I had a very embarrassing and disappointing experience with Baxter's canned haggis. I had brought some home to the USA to show my friends how lovely haggis was, but instead of getting Grant's haggis, the canned variety I normally get when a butcher's haggis isn't practical, I bought Baxter's, on the grounds they were supposed to be this outstanding highland canning company. Big mistake. It tasted like mediocre beef hash, and nothing at all like haggis. I tried to tell my friends this wasn't at all like *real* haggis, but I worry the damage may have been done! Haggis made by a good butcher is, of course, far superior to any canned variety, but canned haggis is better than none -- if it's the right brand! I imagine I shall be getting care packages of Grant's from my Scottish friends when I return to the USA permanently... Sharon Krossa, who loves haggis, even the canned sort, and is very sensitive to slights to the haggisly honour skrossa at svpal.org (permanent) -or- s.krossa at aberdeen.ac.uk (until June 1996) From: s.krossa at aberdeen.ac.uk (Sharon Krossa) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 23:41:46 +0000 Organization: Phuture PhuDs In article <4kube0$5f0 at info.abdn.ac.uk>, Jim_Dunn at abdn.ac.uk (Jim Dunn) wrote: >Sharon Krossa (s.krossa at aberdeen.ac.uk) wrote: > >> Regarding canned haggis, or any haggis really: You need to read the label >> carefully. A surprising number of canned haggis and other haggises (ie, the >> ones that come with ingrediants tags) are made with beef, without any >> sheep, but including other strange things that have no place being in a >> haggis. So read the label, make sure it's made with real sheep! I had a >> very embarrassing and disappointing experience with Baxter's canned haggis. >> I had brought some home to the USA to show my friends how lovely haggis >> was, but instead of getting Grant's haggis, the canned variety I normally >> get when a butcher's haggis isn't practical, I bought Baxter's, on the >> grounds they were supposed to be this outstanding highland canning company. >> Big mistake. It tasted like mediocre beef hash, and nothing at all like >> haggis. I tried to tell my friends this wasn't at all like *real* haggis, >> but I worry the damage may have been done! > >Didn't you mean mediocre mutton hash? I imagine you did check the label, >even for a firm with the reputation of Baxters! Anyway, that's just me >teasing. No no no :) I meant beef hash. There was no mutton, lamb, or sheep of any kind in the Baxter's product (I hesitate to even call it haggis). If I recall correctly it had diced potato in it too, or at least by taste it seemed so. It was most odd. (And yes, the label did say haggis, NOT stovies!) That experience was the one that taught me to always read the label. (Proper shocked I was, too -- imagine! Baxter's! And after all their lovely cosy commercials too...) >The following is a serious question, though, which I hope >Sharon will answer. Nowadays, all the haggises I encounter seem to >contain oatmeal as their main cereal ingredient. However, when I was a >lad, I believe the typical average haggis contained barley rather than >oatmeal. Is my memory faulty (or at that age couldn't I tell the > difference) or is there a regional variation - after all, here I am in >the North-East of Scotland but I came from the South-West? Or could >it be that haggises have evolved? Come now, Jim, you'll know better than I! I've only ever lived in the North-East of Scotland... erm, I mean to say, the only place in Scotland I've ever lived is the North-East, and I thought oatmeal was the standard thing. But then, I only arrived here the first time about 10 years ago! The best haggis I ever had though (strange as it may seem) was a deep fried one on the isle of Mull in a little chippy there about 6 years ago. I couldn't tell you though if it had oats or barley. I don't know why it was so good, but I've never forgotten it! That was my first fried haggis, and I've been desperately trying to find one as good ever since... The New Dolphin (off Union St. up by Holburn Jct) is nae bad, but can't really hold a candle to that chippy on Mull! I've dug out "Scottish Cookery" by Catherine Brown (its a cookbook, not a history book -- I do have some!), though, and she says of haggis: "15th-century recipes use the liver and the blood of the sheep, while later recipes in the 17th century, referring to making a 'Haggas Pudding in the Sheep's Paunch' use a wider variety of ingredients -- parsley, savoury, thyme, onions, beef, suet, oatmeal, cloves, mace, pepper and salt, sewn up and boiled; seved with a hole cut in the top and filled with butter melted with two or three eggs. Another recipe uses a calve's paunch and the entrails minced together with grated bread, yoks of eggs, cream, spice, dried fruits and herbs, seved as a sweet with sugar and almonds: while yet another recipe uses oatmeal steeped and boiled, mixed with spices, raisins, onions and herbs." Elsewhere she says modern butchers keep secret their permutations, but her basic recipe that includes sheep pluck, pinhead oatmeal, suet, onion, salt, pepper, and mixed herbs is "a traditional recipe which most butchers will tell you is basically what they work from, though no two of them will produce the same haggis." She doesn't say anything about barley, maybe its a South-West thing -- it does sound like there is more room for variation that we thought! But I still say -- not for beef! (Brown does say people get very picky about how they like their haggis, so it seems there is reason for the butchers to shun uniformity! Mark me down under the "no beef in the haggis" column) Sharon Krossa, wondering why Jim isn't off Software Engineering something and realizing with shock she's apparently not all alone in Aberdeen! PS Brown's book lists a bunch of historical cookery sources in the back, but doesn't tell which were the ones that told about haggis skrossa at svpal.org (permanent) -or- s.krossa at aberdeen.ac.uk (until June 1996) From: s.krossa at aberdeen.ac.uk (Sharon Krossa) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 09:29:49 +0000 Organization: Phuture PhuDs Magorn wrote: >a certain group of wierdos with whom i ocassionally hang out are trying >to get a group of people together to Put on kilts and pipes and go into a >MC Donalds and Loudly and indignantly demand 15 orders of McHaggis to go.... Fast food haggis... not as weird as you think! In Scotland, at the fish and chip shops, you can also get haggis, dipped in batter and deep fat fried :-) McDonalds in Scotland, however, have yet to catch on... Sharon Krossa, who doesn't like fish but still frequents the chippies! skrossa at svpal.org (permanent) -or- s.krossa at aberdeen.ac.uk (until June 1996) From: IVANOR at delphi.com Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Haggis Date: 20 Apr 1996 01:37:23 GMT Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation Quoting Jim_Dunn from a message in rec.org.sca >that's just me teasing. The following is a serious question, though, >which I hope Sharon will answer. Nowadays, all the haggises I >encounter seem to contain oatmeal as their main cereal ingredient. >However, when I was a lad, I believe the typical average haggis >contained barley rather than oatmeal. Is my memory faulty (or at >that age couldn't I tell the difference) or is there a regional >variation - after all, here I am in the North-East of Scotland >but I came from the South-West? Or could it be that haggises have >evolved? I've never heard of haggis made with anything but oats, nor does my Scots cookbook mention any change (and it has a surprising amount of history... which enabled me to cook a Scottish feast some years ago.) Carolyn Boselli ivanor at delphi.com Host of CF35..SCAdians on Delphi ivanor at localnet.com From: "Aonghas MacLeoid (B.G. Morris)" Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 21:37:02 -0400 Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks Re[2]: Atholbrose. Please refer to my homepage (address to be found under my signature) and click on the *highlighted* haggis, to find out more info on this most famous of Scottish dishes. Regards, Aonghas hylndr at ionline.net http://www.ionline.net/~hylndr/ From: Mara Riley Newsgroups:rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:41:34 -0400 I've had haggis; thought it was halfway decent. It did need more spices, though. (I know, that's considered a crime or something! :D) To me, haggis tasted rather like a liver sausage with a bit of a muttony taste. I like beef liver, myself; someone who doesn't like liver probably won't like haggis either. And yes, the organ meats are the most nutritious parts of the animal. I buy my sausage at a local deli which makes them fresh. These are GREAT sausage, and guess what they use for the casings? Intestines, which is what people have used for sausage casings for centuries. Which makes haggis different only in the method of cooking it, I guess! Corbie From: "Deb Hense" Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Haggis (was: tartan something... Date: 30 Apr 1997 19:30:20 GMT Organization: Microware Systems Corp dam at galasphere347.dcs.gal.ac.uk wrote on Tuesday, April 29 at 9:37 am: > But it is a fact. Haggis was what was raided from the bins, usually kitchen > scraps and slaughter discards mixed with oatmeal. How else do you explain > people eating sheeps stomach, lungs and heart?? No one in their right mind > would eat such a concoction unless they were living in poverty and on the edge > of starvation. Sometimes I wonder if maybe Burns was having a joke at > everyone's expense, and they all fell for it! Was it the deep fried Mars bar > of its day? A running joke that took on a life of its own? Oh well, maybe > we'll have stovies elevated to haute cuisine one day..hmmm.. > > Glasgow. Sorry, but I have made a small study in this area - especially with regards to sausages. The lungs and heart are commonly known in period as the *lights* of an animal. They were often used in sausages, or thrown into stews, or served up as a special dish. The stomachs and intestines were the skins or holders of these special dishes or sausages. This is true in all the countries/cultures that I have studied so far. Heart is still a specialty item in many countries, and you can still get it in many of the ole US of A grocery stores. It is only in the past 100 years that use of these animal parts for human consumption has fallen off, and it is now ground into animal foods or otherwise used. Much of our sausage casings are now made out of something like cellulose (sp?) instead of intestines. Because much of period was much closer to its agrarian roots than modern society (especially in the US) is, they were much less wasteful of their food sources. Take a good look at some of those period cookbooks. Many of them contain recipes calling for the *lights* of such and such an animal. Look it up in the OE. These recipes were not written down for the people who lived in poverty (few of whom could actually read) - but for the merchant (read middle) and upper-classes. As to whether Haggis tastes good or not. I've had great haggis and I've had really bad haggis. Methinks it doth depend entirely on the cook. Kateryn de Develyn Who once wrote a little cookbook which contained a lot of period sausage recipes! From: ALBAN at delphi.COM Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: haggis Date: 4 May 1997 03:09:17 -0400 One EPotter asked >What is the etymology of "haggis"? Is there any record of when the >dish may have been introduced? From my copy of the CD-ROM edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: >>haggis: [Derivation unknown. The analogy of most terms of cookery suggests a French source; but no corresp. F. word or form has been found. The conjecture that it represents F. hachis 'hash', with assimilation to hag, hack, to chop, has app. no basis of fact; F. hachis is not known so early, and the earlier forms of the Eng. word are more remote from it. Whether the word is connected with hag vb., evidence does not show.] << and the first quote in the OED dates it to 1420. Alban Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 23:39:19 -0700 (PDT) From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - Re- Welcome to Errick There is a period haggis recipe, under that name, in Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books; I have never tried it. Elizabeth/Betty Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 08:34:42 -0500 From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter) Subject: Re: SC - Re- Welcome to Errick Hi, Katerine here. Elizabeth of Dendermonde mentions the recipe for haggis under that name in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. There are also recipes for haggis (under that name) in Diversa Servicia (in Cury on Inglysch; recipe 15) and in Liber Cure Cocorum (recipe 125); for haggis of almayne (under that name or a corruption) in TFCCB (first MS, Leche Viaunds recipe 50, and second MS, recipe 84) and An Ordinance of Pottage (recipe 104); for haggis of a sheep (TFCCB, first MS, Leche Viaunds recipe 25); and for haggis under other names (fraunche mele or a variant of that, and an entrayle) in TFCCB first MS LV 21 and 26, Liber Cure Cocorum 86, and Noble Boke of Cookery 243. I've never made any of them. Cheers, - -- Katerine/Terry Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 00:34:40 EST From: korrin.daardain at juno.com (Korrin S DaArdain) Subject: SC - RE: haggis Did someone say: Haggis 1 Sheep's stomach bag plus the pluck (lights, liver and heart) 1/4 pint beef stock 1 lb Lean mutton 6 oz Fine oatmeal 8 oz Shredded suet 2 lg Onions, chopped Salt and pepper about 1/4 pint beef stock. Soak the stomach bag in salted water overnight. Place the pluck (lights, liver and heart) in a saucepan with the windpipe hanging over the edge. Cover with water and boil for 1 1/2 hours. Impurities will pass out through the windpipe and it is advisable to place a basin under it to catch any drips. Drain well and cool. Remove the windpipe and any gristle or skin. Mince the liver and heart with the mutton. (Add some of the lights before mincing if you wish.) Toast the oatmeal gently until pale golden brown and crisp. Combine with minced mixture, suet and onion. Season well and add sufficient stock to moisten well. Pack into the stomach bag, filling it just over half-full as the stuffing will swell during cooking. Sew up the bag tightly or secure each end with string. Put an upturned plate in the base of a saucepan of boiling water, stand the haggis on this and bring back to the boil. Prick the haggis all over with a large needle to avoid bursting and boil steadily for 3 to 4 hours. Makes 6 to 8 servings. Korrin S. DaArdain Dodging trees in the Kingdom of An Tir. Korrin.DaArdain at Juno.com From: Larry Johnson Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Hagus? Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 23:00:25 -0700 Organization: IDT Michael Pruitt wrote: > Does anybody have a recipe for hagus? Thanks for any help. Haggis recipes coming up, go to http://www/smart.net/~haggis.html and you will have haggis coming out your ear. One word of advice on using the oatmeal, try to find the Irish Oatmeal, it is more granular in consistancy, don't use Quaker Rolled Oats as the haggis will turn out to be hard as a brick. There are lots of good recipes on this list. From: Larry Johnson Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Hagus? Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 10:13:05 -0700 Organization: IDT > Take all the leftovers from the butchering of a sheep , stuff into its > stomache , cook > > Shear the sheep close. Wet it down, and roll it in oats. Cut off the > hooves, turn inside out, bake. Good ones!! HAHAHAHAHahahaha 8>) I'll have to pass those along at the Scottish Games. HAGGIS (from A Feast if Scotland, Janet Warren) Stomach bag and pluck (heart, liver and lights [lungs] of a sheep) 2 onions, peeled 2 cups pinhead oatmeal (Irish oatmeal) 1 2/3 cup suet salt and pepper trussing needle and fine string Thoroughly wash the stomach bag in cold water, Turn it inside out and scald it, then scrape the surface with a knife. Soak it in cold salted water overnight. Next day remove the bag from the water and leave it to one side while preparing the filling. Wash the pluck, put it into a pan with the windpipe hanging over the side of the bowl, to let out any impurities. Cover the pluck with cold water, add 1 teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil. Skim the surface, the simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Meanwhile, parboil the onions, drain, reserving the liquid, and chop them roughly. Also toast the pinhead oatmeal until golden brown. Drain the pluck when ready and cut away the windpipe and any excess gristle. Mince half the liver with all the heart and lights, then stir in the shredded suet, the toasted oatmeal and the onions. Season well with salt and pepper. Moisten with as much of the onion or pluck water as necessary to make the mixture soft. With the rough surface of the bag outside, fill it just over half full, the oatmeal will swell during cooking, and sew the ends together with the trussing needle and fine string. Prick the bag in places with the needle. Place the haggis on an enamel plate and put it into a pan of boiling water. Cover the pan and cook for about 3 hours, adding more boiling water when necessary to keep the haggis covered. Serve with the traditional accompaniment of Tatties-an'-Neeps (mashed potatoes and mashed turnips mixed together) and a fine single malt scotch. FYI-- a sheep's stomach is hard to find, so a very large boiling bag works well. Using the lungs of a sheep is not allowed by the FDA. You can substitute other organ meats for the lungs. SLAINTE Yours aye Labhruinn MacIain an Mor Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 10:31:30 -0400 From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow) Subject: Re: SC - Haggis?? >Anybody got a period haggis recipe?? > >bill Oy! You would make me boot up *that* program, wouldn't you! I have several period haggis recipes in "Take a Thousand Eggs or More"; some call for the stomach of a sheep, others for that of a porpoise. ([th] has been substituted for 'thorn) Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez, c. 1430 xxv. Hagws of a schepe. Take [th]e Roppis with [th]e talour, & parboyle hem; [th]an hakke hem smal; grynd pepir, & Safroun, & brede, & [3]olkys of Eyroun, & Raw kreme or swete Mylke: do al to-gederys, & do in [th]e grete wombe of the Schepe, [th]at is, the mawe; & [th]an se[th]e hym an serue forth ynne. Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xl. Puddyng of purpaysse. Take [th]e Blode of hym, & [th]e grece of hym self, & Ote-mele, & Salt, & Pepir, & Gyngere, & melle [th]ese to-gederys wel, & [th]an putte [th]is in [th]e Gutte of [th]e purpays, & [th]an lat it se[th]e esyli, & not hard, a good whylys; & [th]an take hym vppe, & broyle hym a lytil, & [th]an serue f[orth]. Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu renfrow at skylands.net Author & Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More, A Collection of 15th Century Recipes" and "A Sip Through Time, A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes" Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 11:10:06 -0500 From: mfgunter at fnc.fujitsu.com (Michael F. Gunter) Subject: Re: SC - Haggis?? Thanks Sincgiefu, These are wonderful recipes. But...... > Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez, c. 1430 > xxv. Hagws of a schepe. Take [th]e Roppis with [th]e talour, & parboyle > hem; [th]an hakke hem smal; grynd pepir, & Safroun, & brede, & [3]olkys of > Eyroun, & Raw kreme or swete Mylke: do al to-gederys, & do in [th]e grete > wombe of the Schepe, [th]at is, the mawe; & [th]an se[th]e hym an serue > forth ynne. I take it "Roppis" to be the intestines and tripe, but what is talour? At first thought it would be "tallow" but I feel it would more likely indicate organ meats like the liver, kidneys, etc... Then ground and mixed with pepper, saffron, breadcrumbs, egg yolks, and cream or milk. Boiled in the stomach. To tell you the truth, it sounds kinda tasty. > Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez > xl. Puddyng of purpaysse. Take [th]e Blode of hym, & [th]e grece of hym > self, & Ote-mele, & Salt, & Pepir, & Gyngere, & melle [th]ese to-gederys > wel, & [th]an putte [th]is in [th]e Gutte of [th]e purpays, & [th]an lat it > se[th]e esyli, & not hard, a good whylys; & [th]an take hym vppe, & broyle > hym a lytil, & [th]an serue f[orth]. Is this the mammal? Although it seems good I won't knowingly eat mammilian dolphin or porpose. Sorry Ras, I'm too much of a liberal to eat animals I consider intelligent. > Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu Gunthar Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 12:42:23 -0400 From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow) Subject: Re: SC - Haggis?? >Thanks Sincgiefu, > >These are wonderful recipes. But...... Sorry , here you go! (I thought everyone here read M.E. by now - y'all do know there's going to be a quiz next Friday, don't you? ;-) ) >> Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez, c. 1430 >> xxv. Hagws of a schepe. Take [th]e Roppis with [th]e talour, & parboyle >> hem; [th]an hakke hem smal; grynd pepir, & Safroun, & brede, & [3]olkys of >> Eyroun, & Raw kreme or swete Mylke: do al to-gederys, & do in [th]e grete >> wombe of the Schepe, [th]at is, the mawe; & [th]an se[th]e hym an serue >> forth ynne. 25. Haggis of a sheep. Take the Guts with the tallow, & parboil them; then hack them small; grind pepper, & Saffron, & bread, & yolks of Eggs, & Raw cream or sweet Milk: put all together, & put in the great stomach of the Sheep, that is, the stomach; & then seethe him and serve forth in. >I take it "Roppis" to be the intestines and tripe, but what is talour? At >first thought it would be "tallow" but I feel it would more likely indicate >organ meats like the liver, kidneys, etc... > >Then ground and mixed with pepper, saffron, breadcrumbs, egg yolks, and >cream or milk. Boiled in the stomach. > >To tell you the truth, it sounds kinda tasty. > >> Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez >> xl. Puddyng of purpaysse. Take [th]e Blode of hym, & [th]e grece of hym >> self, & Ote-mele, & Salt, & Pepir, & Gyngere, & melle [th]ese to-gederys >> wel, & [th]an putte [th]is in [th]e Gutte of [th]e purpays, & [th]an lat it >> se[th]e esyli, & not hard, a good whylys; & [th]an take hym vppe, & broyle >> hym a lytil, & [th]an serue f[orth]. 40. Pudding of porpoise. Take the Blood of him, & the grease of him self, & Oatmeal, & Salt, & Pepper, & Ginger, & mix these together well, & then put this in the Gut of the porpoise, & then let it seethe gently, & not hard, a good while; & then take him up, & broil him a little, & then serve f[orth]. >Is this the mammal? Although it seems good I won't knowlingly eat mammilian >dolphin or porpous. Sorry Ras, I'm too much of a liberal to eat animals >I consider intelligent. Yes, it's the mammal. Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu renfrow at skylands.net Author & Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More, A Collection of 15th Century Recipes" and "A Sip Through Time, A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes" Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 12:12:06 -0700 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - Haggis?? At 9:42 PM -0500 5/27/98, William Seibert wrote: >Anybody got a period haggis recipe?? Yes, but it's English. Hagws of a schepe (Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books p. 39) Take the Roppis [i.e. guts] with the talour [tallow=fat], & parboyle hem; than hakke hem smal; grynd pepir, & Safroun, & brede, & yolkys of Eyroun, & Raw kreme or swete Mylke: do al to-gederys, & do in the grete wombe of the Schepe, that is, the maw [stomach]; & than sethe hym and serue forth ynne. [thorns replaced by th's] I haven't tried it, but it seems straightforward enough, if you can get the ingredients. I would find a modern haggis recipe to tell you how long to boil it and such. Elizabeth/Betty Cook Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 02:45:19 EDT From: korrin.daardain at juno.com (Korrin S DaArdain) Subject: SC - Haggis: Traditional, Mock Lamb, & Mock Beef. Greetings All, I have three recipes for Haggis in my collection. Enjoy. Korrin S. DaArdain Kingdom of An Tir. Korrin.DaArdain at Juno.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Haggis _ From A Feast of Scotland, by Janet Warren. Posted by Dorothy Flatman, Clackamas, Oregon, USA (Fidonet 1:105/86) 1 Stomach bag and pluck (heart liver and lungs of a sheep (You can substitute a selection of organ meats)) 2 Onions; peeled 2 c Pinhead oatmeal; (Irish oatmeal) 1 2/3 c Suet Salt & pepper 1 trussing needle and fine string Thoroughly wash the stomach bag in cold water. Turn it inside out and scald it, then scrape the surface with a knife. Soak it in cold salted water overnight. Next day remove the bag from the water and leave it on one side while preparing the filling. Wash the pluck. Put it into a pan, with the windpipe hanging over the side into a bowl, to let out any impurities. Cover the pluck with cold water, add 1 teaspoon of salt and bring the water to a boil. Skim the surface, then simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Meanwhile parboil the onions, drain, reserving the liquid, and chop them roughly. Also toast the pinhead oatmeal until golden brown. Drain the pluck when ready and cut away the windpipe and any excess gristle. Mince half the liver with all the heart and lights, then stir in the shredded suet, the toasted oatmeal and the onions. Season well with salt and pepper. Moisten with as much of the onion or pluck water as necessary to make the mixture soft. With the rough surface of the bag outside fill it just over half full, the oatmeal will swell during cooking, and sew the ends together with the trussing needle and fine string. Prick the bag in places with the needle. Place the haggis on and enamel plate and put it into a pan of boiling water. Cover the pan and cook for about 3 hours, adding more boiling water when necessary to keep the haggis covered. Serve with the traditional accompaniment of Tatties-an'Neeps. (Mashed potatoes and mashed turnips.) This is typically served on Burns' Night, January 25, when Scotland celebrates the birth of their greatest poet, Robert Burns, who was born in Ayrshire on that date in 1759. During the celebration, Burns poems are read, and the haggis is addressed by a member of the party, ceremonially, in the for of verses from Burns' poem, "Address to a Haggis" A typical meal for Burn's night would include, Cock-a-Leekie, Haggis with Tattie-an'-neeps, Roastit Beef, Tipsy Laird, and Dunlop Cheese. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Haggis, Mock Lamb From Country Living, March, 1991. Posted by Dorothy Flatman, Clackamas, Oregon, USA (Fidonet 1:105/86) 1 lb Boneless lamb shoulder or Breast, cut into pieces, or Use ground lamb 1/2 lb Lamb liver; cut into pieces 1/2 c Water 1 sm Onion; coarsely chopped 1 lg Egg 3/4 ts Salt 3/4 ts Pepper, black 1/2 ts Sugar 1/4 ts Ginger, ground 1/8 ts Cloves, ground 1/8 ts Nutmeg, ground 1 c Oats, rolled, old fashioned Heat oven to 350-F. Grease an 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch loaf pan. In food processor with chopping blade, process together half of the lamb, the liver, water, onion, egg, salt, pepper, sugar, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg until well combined. Add the remaining half of the lamb and the oats; process until well combined. Spoon lamb mixture into the greased pan; pat surface to level. Bake 45 to 55 minutes or until center feels firm when gently pressed. Cool 5 minutes in pan; un-mold onto platter; slice and serve. Notes: This skinless haggis is planned for American tastes, yet contains many of the ingredients found in the real thing. You can un-mold the loaf and serve it in place of the purchased haggis recipes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Haggis, Mock Beef _ From Lillian Beckwith's Hebridean Cookbook by Lillian Beckwith. Posted by Dorothy Flatman, Clackamas, Oregon, USA (Fidonet 1:105/86) 1/2 lb Liver 1/2 lb Beef, minced 2 md Onions 6 oz Oatmeal, medium 6 oz Suet; shredded 1 ts Salt 1 pn Pepper 1 pn Nutmeg; grated 1/3 c Water in which liver had been boiled 1 pn Cayenne pepper "Haggis, "The great Chieftain of the pudding' race", as Robert Burns, described it, is indeed a toothsome morsel and it is a great pity that many English people look upon it as more a Scottish joke than a good Scottish dish. However since Haggis is made from the stomach, lungs and other internals of a sheep it is a rather gruesome sight during certain stages of its cooking, as anyone who has witnessed the process will agree. The lung must be first be heating in a pan of hot water with the trachea hanging over the side to allow any blood and froth to escape and the stomach bag must be cleaned and scraped very thoroughly before it is used. I must say from experience that it takes needs a fairly robust stomach to first prepare and then eat it. If you can buy prepared haggis I do strongly recommend you to try it. All you need to do is slice it and fry it in a lightly greased frying pan. If you cannot buy ready-made haggis, then the following is tasty substitute.." Boil the liver for five minutes. Drain and put aside to cool. Toast the oatmeal in a dry frying pan or in the oven until it begins to turn a pale brown. Peel and mince the onions and the liver. Mix all the ingredients with the seasoning and stir in some of the water in which the liver has been boiled. The mixture should be thoroughly moist but not wet. Have ready a greased basin large enough to give the mixture room to swell. Cover with grease proof paper and a cloth and boil or steam for three hours. The traditional way to serve haggis is with mashed potatoes and turnips - "tatties and neeps", as they are called in Scotland - and to give the meal a truly Scottish flavor you should serve a glass of whiskey along with it. I like to let the mock haggis go cold and then slice it and heat it through in a frying pan (without fat) until golden brown on both sides. This way it is very good with poached eggs and even with chips. Note: if your mince looks to be on the fatty side, then cut down the quantity of suet to 4 oz (100grams). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998 08:47:58 -0700 From: "Anne-Marie Rousseau" Subject: Haggis and lamb tummies was Re: SC - More lamb Hi from Anne-Marie, resident ex-farmgirl and ruminent breeder :) Phlip asks: > > . I would appreciate recipes for blood sausage and black pudding, > > possibly a haggis, if someone can specify WHICH stomach, and any other > > parts not mentioned. any "ethnic" scottish cookbook will have a recipe for such things, as well as Robert May, etc if you want a period source. Now that you mention it, I dont think any of the sources I've looked at ever actually mention which part of the digestive tract, other than to say "stomach" (or some other equally unhelpful word). Now, as for which stomach, actually, technically, I'm betting they want the rumen, the big empty bit, which actually, technically isnt part of the stomach at all, but is a pouch off the esophagus. You got your rumen, your omassum and your reticulum, see, and then you got your abomasum, which actually the stomach bit. Dont mind me...I did a 4H demonstration on this when I was 12 :). Each bit does something different, see, and the rumen is the biggest and hollowest, so that's why I'm thinking its the "sheeps maw" or "paunch" mentioned in the sources. As for other bits, they mention the liver and heart (self explanitory), the lights (lungs), and one of my books specifies the tongue as well. - --Anne-Marie d'Ailleurs mka Anne-Marie Rousseau Madrone/An Tir Seattle/WA Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 08:04:58 -0700 From: "Anne-Marie Rousseau" Subject: Re: Haggis and lamb lungs was Re: SC - More lamb > I, too have been considering making a Haggis, and have done some > looking around on the net for more information. I learned something that > actually has be a bit relvieved. > > Acording to the Haggis Web page (funny that there is such a thing, > huh?) the FDA had decreed that sheep lung is not fit for human consumption. > This is why haggis is not imported. I would assume that would mean you also > could not get the lung from a butcher, or from the processing house you > might. > > Alys D. Hi from AM I'm sure that its not that the FDA "doesnt consider the lung fit for human consumption", but that they're afraid of the really rather nastie cooties one can get specifically from sheeps lungs. (can you say liver flukes?). These guys encyst in the lung and a cursory visual exam may or may not get them. You CAN find lungs in the country, but it takes some digging. I think there's a butcher here in Seattle who specializes in...ahem....special bits? I could of sworn I saw the list on the wall include "lights" next to the Rocky Mountains Oysters, sweet breads, etc. Another possibility is to buy the sheep yourself, ie totally skip the FDA. I'd be very careful WHO I bought it from though...if a single sheep coughed when I was there, and the pasture wasnt bone dry I doubt I'd eat the lungs (the fluke has a water born stage...the sheep get it from eating grasses grown in watery pasture. Migrates to the lung. Normally it encysts there for a bit, then hatches, and crawls up the esophagus (hence the cough), gets swallowed and out in the feces, back to the water. Rather tidy! probably more info than you wanted, sorry!) Anyway, the point is, the FDA isn’t making some sort of value judgement, the rule is there for a very good reason. You can probably get around it if you want to, but be very careful! - --Anne-Marie Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 09:04:42 -0400 From: Phil & Susan Troy Subject: Re: Haggis and lamb tummies was Re: SC - More lamb Weiszbrod, Barbara A wrote: > I, too have been considering making a Haggis, and have done some > looking around on the net for more information. I learned something that > actually has be a bit relvieved. > > Acording to the Haggis Web page (funny that there is such a thing, > huh?) the FDA had decreed that sheep lung is not fit for human consumption. > This is why haggis is not imported. I would assume that would mean you also > could not get the lung from a butcher, or from the processing house you > might. > > The reason I find this comforting is that I can handle cooking the > hart and the liver, but the idea of lungs in a pot with the trachia hanging > out the side is too much for this city girl. Yucky. > > Alys D. You can make quite a good "faux" haggis using lamb hearts and liver, which will cut down on the livery flavor many Americans don't approve of anyway, and substituting spleens in equal weight for the lungs. If you have a good "ethnic" butcher, one whose name ends in a vowel ; ), etc., he should either have pork spleen or be able to order some for you. (Ask about milts or melt if he looks blank when you ask for spleen, or there may be another local term.) Spleen is vaguely similar to lungs in flavor, color, and, when ground up as for haggis, texture (lungs are ordinarily relatively spongy, which can be solved by parboiling them and cooling under a weighted plate or board, but for haggis this is not a problem). Haggises made without lights tend to be paler in color and more bland, more like liverwurst, but spleens will help give the distinctive dark color and rich flavor a haggis should have, even if they're not authentic sheep's lungs. Spleen, BTW, is a flat strip of dark red organ meat, with a thin line of fat running along the center line. By the way, I highly recommend using haggis recipes that _do_ call for suet over ones that don't, and the other essential is that while the more exotic spices seem to have been rare in the Scottish Highlands until the 19th century or so, you can accomplish a lot for the flavor with judiciously applied salt and pepper. I recommend seasoning your ground filling and tasting it (since your meats will have already been cooked), bearing in mind that this is supposed to be a sausage. Oh, and never, ever, use rolled oats. The only thing they're good for is oatmeal cookies, and that's debatable when you place them side by side with the same cookie made with real oatmeal. Adamantius Østgardr, East Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 14:38:26 EDT From: LrdRas at aol.com Subject: SC - The Problems with Lungs tyrca at yahoo.com writes: << Perhaps there is another way to cook them, >> My experience with cooking lungs is that the trachea should be draped over the pot rim as suggested. I have removed it and found that the lungs puff up with the hot air and steam from cooking. They then float around on the surface like some bizaare sea creature. If the lungs are slit, the slit seems to adhere to the underlying lissue and you get an irregular blob floating about. Either way, floating causes uneven cooking, which is a bad thing. I have also cut them in pieces which causes a decernable flavor difference in the finished product. In smaller animals the problem of floating is not quite so bad. In fact, the garbage that I served with the Roasted Rabbit at Will's contained not only the heart, livers spleen and kidneys of the rabbit but also the lungs. They seemed to cook well and the air sort of disappereared aftem repeated submersions and stirrings. Ras Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 10:13:18 -0500 From: James Gilly / Alasdair mac Iain Subject: RE: Haggis and lamb tummies was Re: SC - More lamb At 09:39 19-10-98 -0500, Alys wrote, regarding haggis: >hmmmm, do you think it would dry out too much if I put it in a chaffing >dish? Or is room temp warm enough? And if it is room temp, is there a >worry about health problems? It gets cooked so long I would think that any >beasties in it would be dead. >From *Scottish Cookery*: Other ways of serving: 'Haggis meat, by those who cannot admire the natural shape,' says Meg Dods, 'may be poured out of the bag, and *served in a deep dish*. No dish heats up better.' It is also a very practical way of serving haggis to large numbers provided it is well covered to prevent drying out. Knobs of butter dotted over the top surface are a good idea. [*Scottish Cookery*, Catherine Brown, p 149. Copyright 1989 by Catherine Brown.] Alasdair mac Iain Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 10:14:55 -0500 From: James Gilly / Alasdair mac Iain Subject: RE: Haggis and lamb tummies was Re: SC - More lamb At 09:11 19-10-98 -0500, Alys wrote: >The point (as far as I can tell) of hanging the tracea out of the pot is to >let gases escape from the lungs and in doing so prevent it from exploding. >That would really be gross! The receipes that I have found tell you to >discard it after the cooking is complete.. >From *Scottish Cookery*: My first haggis-making exploits were as a student when the whole process took the best part of a day to complete. The raw Sheep's Pluck*, while not a pretty sight, didn't worry me at all but the windpipe hanging over the side of the pot which the whole pluck was cooking in, quietly disgorging the blood and other impurities from the lungs into a jar which we had placed on the cooker, did not appeal. * A Sheep's Pluck is the part of the animal which has been 'plucked' out of the belly and includes the liver, heart and lungs which are all joined together with the windpipe at one end. [*Scottish Cookery*, Catherine Brown, pp 147-148. Copyright 1989 by Catherine Brown.] Instructions for actually making the haggis (the day after the pluch has been cooked) include "cut off the windpipe, trim away all skin and black parts." Alasdair mac Iain Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 10:00:05 -0500 From: James Gilly / Alasdair mac Iain Subject: SC - Haggis HAGGIS Walk into any butcher's shop in Scotland and ask how many pounds of haggis they make in a week - you will be astonished. And this, for every week of the year; not just at the national festivals of St Andrew's Day and Burns' night when demand often outstrips supply and butchers are frequently sold out by the end of the morning. If the desire for haggis is strong at home, it becomes an obsession for exiled Scots who have vast quantities air-freighted to all parts of the globe for these two nights of the year. Ny first haggis-making exploits were as a student when the whole process took the best part of a day to complete. The raw Sheep's Pluck*, while not a pretty sight, didn't worry me at all but the windpipe hanging over the side of the pot which the whole pluck was cooking in, quietly disgorging the blood and other impurities from the lungs into a jar which we had placed on the cooker, did not appeal. It was about ten years before I had another go, when I was working in a hotel which bought whole sheep and as the plucks started filling up the precious deep freeze space, prompted by necessity, I got out my old Haggis recipe in *The Glasgow Cookery Book* (John Smith, Glasgow, Revised Edition, 1962). It is a traditional recipe which most butchers will tell you is basically what they work from, though no two of them will produce the same haggis. Variations are secret and have been developed over many years testing the Scottish palate for preferences. Haggis lovers have very definite ideas about the best qualities of haggis and a competition is held each year to find the best butcher's haggis. * A Sheep's Pluck is the part of the animal which has been 'plucked' out of the belly and includes the liver, heart and lungs which are all joined together with the windpipe at one end. Qualities of a good Haggis The flavour is a matter of taste, with some liking it spicy and 'hot' with plenty of pepper, while others prefer a milder flavour with more herbs than spices. Relative proportions of meat to oatmeal, suet and onions also depend on individual preferences as does the type of offal used. Some butchers will use ox liver because their customers prefer the flavour, while others stick to the traditional sheep's - there are all kinds of ermutations which make haggis eating something of an adventure. More a question of quality, the meat should have no tough gristly bits sometimes found in a badly-made haggis and the texture should be moist and firm, rather than dry and crumbly. Traditional method 1 sheep's bag and pluck 4 oz/125 g suet, finely chopped (1 c) 4 medium onions, finely chopped 1/2 lb/250 g pinhead oatmeal (2 c) 2-4 tablespoons salt 1 level teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 level teaspoon dries mixed herbs (2 for fresh) Preparing the pluck and bag Wash the bag in cold water, scrape and clean well. Leave overnight in cold water. Wash the pluck and put it ina pan of boiling water. Let the windpipe lie over the side of the pot and have a small jar underneath to catch the drips. Simmer gently till all are tender - this depends on the age of the animal but is usually between one and two hours. Place the cooked pluck in a large basin, cover with the liquid which it was boiled in and leave overnight. Making the Haggis (The next day) Toast the oatmeal in the oven till thoroughly dried-out but not browned. Cut off the windpipe, trim away all skin and black parts. Chop or mince the heart and lungs, grate the liver. Add the oatmeal, salt, pepper, herbs and about 1 pt/1/2 L (2 1/2 c) of the liquid the pluck was boiled in. Mix well, fill the bag rather more than half full of the ixture. Press out the air, sew up and prick with a long needle. Place in boiling water, simmer for 3 hours, pricking again when it swells. The bag may be cut into several pieces to make smaller haggis in which case cook for only 1 1/2-2 hours. Serve hot with 'tatties' - Creamed Potatoes flavoured with nutmeg (see p. 181); 'neeps' - Mashed Turnip flavoured with allspice (see p. 194) and a good blended whisky. Other ways of serving 'Haggis meat, by those who cannot admire the natural shape,' says Meg Dods, 'may be poured out of the bag, and *served in a deep dish*. No dish heats up better.' It is also a very practical way of serving haggis to large numbers provided it is well covered to prevent drying out. Knobs of butter dotted over the top surface are a good idea. Slices of haggis can be grilled, fried or wrapped in foil and baked in the oven with a bit of butter on top. The slices can be served as part of a Mixed Grill or for breakfast with bacon and egg. It is very good fried and served simply with fried onions or with an onion sauce lightly flavoured with whisky. I have had a slice of fried haggis served in a roll and described as a 'Haggisburger'. It was served with a whisky-flavoured chutney and was an excellent snack. It can also be used with mince in a Shepherd's Pie. Provided you are careful about the dominating flavour it can be used as a stuffing. It should not be used with delicately-flavoured meat like chicken unless it is a very mild haggis. Other ingredients can be added to the haggis such as nuts or cooked rice. Mixing in a little tomato sauce (see p. 257) can work well. An Edinburgh butcher, well-known for his quality haggis, Charles MacSween has recently made a vegetarian haggis with an excellent flavour which is proving popular. It has a variety of vegetables, spices, oatmeal and brown rice. Perhaps the most unusual idea is that of serving cold haggis. Some years ago I met a chef whose local butcher made such a good haggis that he served a slice of it cold with hot toast as a starter course. It seemed that he used pork fat and meat rather than suet along with a delicate combination of herbs and spices with excellent results. Variations in other recipes include adding the juice of a lemon or a little 'good vinegar'. Even flavouring with cayenne pepper. Quantities of oatmeal and suet vary a lot with up to 2 lb/1 kg oatmeal and 1 lb/500 g suet to a singlepluck. Some are boiled for up to 6 hours. Meg Dods says that, 'A finer haggis may be made by parboiling and skinning sheep's tongues and kidneys, and substituting these minced, for most ot the lights, and soaked bread or crisped crumbs for the toasted meal.' For those who can't face a whole pluck she also says that the parboiled minced meat from a sheep's head can be used for haggis. Origins of Haggis Pudding Like pies, puddings have always been made with a collection of miscellaneous ingredients; the one under a pie crust, the other boiled in the stomach bag of an animal. The term 'pudding' came from the habit in 15th and 16th centuries of referring to the entrails of animals and men as 'puddings'. Pudding Lane in London is thought to have derived its name, not from an association with edible puddings, but because 'the butchers of Eastcheap have their scalding-houses for hogs there, and their puddings, with other filth of beasts, are voided down that way to their Dung-boats on the Thames.' From the 15th century to about the 18th century, recipes for early puddings are closely connected with something called a 'Haggis' or 'Haggas' pudding. The general principle involved the use of the stomach bag with a filling of the cooked entrails plus some other ingredients. 15th-century recipes use the liver and the blood of the sheep, while later recipes in the 17th century. referring to making a 'Haggas Pudding in the Sheep's Paunch' use a wider variety of ingredients - parsley, savoury, thyme, onions, beef, suet, oatmeal, cloves, mace, pepper and salt, sewn up and boiled; served with a hole cut in the top and filled with butter melted with two or three eggs. Another recipe uses a calve's paunch* and the entrails minced together with grated bread, yolks of eggs, cream, spices, dried fruits and herbs, served as a sweet with sugar and almonds; while yet another recipe uses oatmeal steeped and boiled, mixed with spices, raisins, onions and herbs. Although the derivation is obscure, some etymologists claim that the term may have been transferred from the now obsolete name for a magpie which was 'Haggiss' or 'Haggess'. A medieval comparison may have been drawn between the magpie's habit of collecting and forming an accumulation of varied articles and the same general principle applied instead to ingredients for the pudding. This analogy is carried even further, with the unproven theory that another early word for the magpie may be responsible for the word 'pie' since at one time the magpie was known as a 'maggot-pie' or a 'Margaret-pie' or even simply as a 'pie'. Whether the habits of the magpie had anything to do with what we know to-day as puddings and pies, the Haggis pudding has a British rather than a Scottish pedigree with the English making Haggis well into the 18th century. The Scots' deeply rooted instincts, bred by centuries of surviving at poverty levels, to use up all the odds and ends of an animal seems to me the best reason why we have continued to make it. The fact that we actually still like to eat it is proof enough of its virtue. * Baxters of Fochabers made one of the largest Haggis, weighing 170 lb, by stuffing the mixture into the interior of two cows' stomachs which had been sewn together [*Scottish Cookery*, by Catherine Brown, pp 147-150. Copyright 1989 Catherine Brown. First published 1985; new edition 1989; reprinted 1990. Richard Drew Publishing Ltd, Glasgow.] ********** ********** ********** Alasdair mac Iain Laird Alasdair mac Iain of Elderslie Dun an Leomhain Bhig Canton of Dragon's Aerie [southeastern CT] Barony Beyond the Mountain [northern & southeastern CT] East Kingdom Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 13:44:35 EST From: Mordonna22 at aol.com Subject: SC - Faux Haggis kathleen.hogan at juno.com writes: > I have a couple of haggis recipes. I > even had an Irish ex-boyfriend who made it for me once. I love the > stuff, but can't get the ingredients around here. My Scots Grandmother (Naomi Morganna LeFay Hardy DuBose) taught me to make a beef version of Haggis: 1/4 LB beef suet 1 beef liver 1 beef heart 1 beef tripe Beef kidneys, lungs, pancreas, spleen, etc. as available. 4 small onions 2 dried chilies 2 tsp. salt 1 Tbs. ground pepper 1 to 2 cups water Place in a heavy stew pot and bring to a boil at high heat, then reduce to medium low heat and simmer for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until very tender. Chop fine and add 1 cup fine oatmeal or barley and 1 quart of water. Return to high heat and bring back to a boil, cover and remove from heat and allow to stand for 20 minutes without peeking. As Ras said, "DO NOT LIFT THE LID" Serve immediately or chill and slice and serve with toast and mustard. Mordonna (Because the Haralds won't allow my true name) DuBois Barony of Atenveldt Kingdom of Atenveldt Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 00:58:03 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Pennsic Potluck Stefan li Rous wrote: > In one of the food classes I was in at Pennsic, taught by Honour Horne-Jaruk > (Alizaunde, Demoiselle de Bregeuf) she said that haggis within out period > was the food of the nobility and was composed of dried fruit in the stomach > rather than the lights. She said that later on it became the food of the > lower classes and that was when the fruit was replaced by the organ meats > and lungs and such. Haggis was _a_ food of the nobility, if we can judge from the extant recipes, which suggest that foods called haggis were eaten in medieval England, specifically 14th-15th century. They do seem to bear little resemblance to th' Graet Chieftain of th' Puddin' Race. It seems likely that a haggis, in general terms, was a pudding boiled in a stomach bag. I recall an early recipe for a haggis (presumably a faux haggis or some kinda warner) made from poached eggs. Another close approximation would be a fronchemoyle, again, a variant on the white pudding theme, boiled in a stomach sack. There are several English haggis recipes that are nearly indistinguishable from a white pudding recipe, generally involving breadcrumbs instead of oats (although even now some white puds do call for oats), with suet, cream, spices, and in some cases, I believe, fruit such as dried Raisins of Corance. I don't know that I accept the idea, though, that haggis became a food of the lower classes; I guess that depends on what one considers lower classes. In Scotland, the farmers who butchered mutton and ate the innards that wouldn't keep well, and the nobles who hunted for various types of deer and made haggis from their innards, aren't what I'd call especially lower classes. What I think has happened is either that the dish evolved over time without especially crossing borders of socio-economic class (at least none it hadn't crossed long since), or that we have early documentation of a regional variant distinct from another regional variant, for which we have later documentation. The two dishes may well have co-existed, in fact almost certainly did, I think. Adamantius Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 09:04:55 -0000 From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" Subject: Re: SC - Pennsic Potluck Stefan wrote: >While I have several haggis recipes in my haggis-msg file, they can best >be described as traditional and I believe are undated. > >Does anyone have evidence to confirm or deny her comments? No, but here is a recipe from the Danish cookbook: How to stuff a sheep´s stomach Take lean veal and pork fat and chop it small together. Add some small raisins and four beaten eggs. Salt to taste and season with some herbs and take care, when you add the eggs, that the mixture is neither too thick nor too thin. Stuff the sheep´s stomach with this, so that each stomach is only half filled, and close it. Place it in boiling water and cook it as other sausages, until it is well cooked and hard. Take it out of the water and cut it in nice slices. Make a nice brown sauce of gingerbread and wine and add some herbs, so it has a lively taste. Add the slices to the sauce, salt it, taste for seasonings, then serve it forth. [The cookbook mentioned is: The recipe comes from "Koge Bog: Indeholdendis et hundrede fornødene stycker Som ere om Brygning, Bagning, Kogen, Brendewijn oc Miød at berede, aare nyttelig udi husholding, etc., Som tilforn icke paa vort Danske Sprog udi Tryck er udgangen", Copenhagen, 1616. As the title says, this is the oldest printed Danish cookbook, and it has one hundred recipes. - Stefan.] Nanna Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 11:57:06 -0400 From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow) Subject: Re: SC - Pennsic Potluck >In one of the food classes I was in at Pennsic, taught by Honour Horne-Jaruk >(Alizaunde, Demoiselle de Bregeuf) she said that haggis within out period >was the food of the nobility and was composed of dried fruit in the stomach >rather than the lights. She said that later on it became the food of the >lower classes and that was when the fruit was replaced by the organ meats >and lungs and such. > >While I have several haggis recipes in my haggis-msg file, they can best >be described as traditional and I believe are undated. > >Does anyone have evidence to confirm or deny her comments? Here are the haggis & haggis-like recipes from Harleian 279, c. 1430: Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xxj. An Entrayle. Take a chepis wombe; take Polettys y-rostyd, & hew hem; [th]en take Porke, chese, & Spicery, & do it on a morter, & grynd alle y-fere; [th]en take it vppe with Eyroun y-swonge, & do in [th]e wombe, & Salt, & se[th]e hem tyl he be y-nowe, & serue forth. Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xxv. Hagws of a schepe. Take [th]e Roppis with [th]e talour, & parboyle hem; [th]an hakke hem smal; grynd pepir, & Safroun, & brede, & [3]olkys of Eyroun, & Raw kreme or swete Mylke: do al to-gederys, & do in [th]e grete wombe of the Schepe, [th]at is, the mawe; & [th]an se[th]e hym an serue forth ynne. Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xxvj. Frawnchemyle. Nym Eyroun with [th]e whyte, & gratid Brede, & chepis talow, Also grete as dyse; nym Pepir, Safroun, & grynd alle to-gederys, & do in [th]e wombe of [th]e chepe, [th]at is, [th]e mawe; & se[th]e hem wyl, & serue forth. Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xl. Puddyng of purpaysse. Take [th]e Blode of hym, & [th]e grece of hym self, & Ote-mele, & Salt, & Pepir, & Gyngere, & melle [th]ese to-gederys wel, & [th]an putte [th]is in [th]e Gutte of [th]e purpays, & [th]an lat it se[th]e esyli, & not hard, a good whylys; & [th]an take hym vppe, & broyle hym a lytil, & [th]an serue f[orth]. Not a raisin in sight. Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu renfrow at skylands.net Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 09:57:45 PDT From: "pat fee" Subject: Re: SC - Pennsic Potluck There is a recipe for Haggis in my family cook book. If I remember right it is made with oats, bits of pre cooked mutton,leeks, currents, cream, or good stock, with what ever dried fruit here was, and a bit of honey. This was cooked slightly to soften the oats, then stuffed in the "bag" and cooked for an unbelievable length of time, 6 hours I think. Lady Katherine McGuire Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 05:12:07 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Pennsic Potluck Stefan li Rous wrote: > To which Adamantius replied: > > > I recall an early recipe for a haggis (presumably a faux haggis or some > > kinda warner) made from poached eggs. Another close approximation would > > be a fronchemoyle, again, a variant on the white pudding theme, boiled > > in a stomach sack. > > > > There are several English haggis recipes that are nearly > > indistinguishable from a white pudding recipe, generally involving > > breadcrumbs instead of oats (although even now some white puds do call > > for oats), with suet, cream, spices, and in some cases, I believe, fruit > > such as dried Raisins of Corance. > > Ok, what is a fronchemoyle or even a white pudding? A white pudding is, for practical purposes, a sausage made from either a light-colored meat, fat, a starch element like rice, breadcrumbs or oats, with or without cream and/or eggs, and in some cases the starch and fat, with spices and salt, but without meat. They're cheap and filling, and probably derive from the need for dietary fat in the days before central heating. There are really elegant French versions today involving capon breast, rabbit meat, cream, etc., while at the other end of the scale you have some UK versions which have been known to resemble well-seasoned modelling clay, based primarily on cracker crumbs and pork fat (And even those aren't any worse than, say, scrapple. Yes, Elysant, there are some good British ones too! Just trying to define a range from my perceived best to worst.) Probably the simplest and best explanation would be to say they're black puddings without the blood. As for Fronchemoyle, I believe Cindy Renfrow posted a recipe from a 15th-century Harleian MS, there's also one in MS Douce 257, c. ~1381 C.E. The name supposedly derives from the name of the second stomach of cows, sheep, and other ruminants. It's a pudding boiled in a stomach, like haggis, made from breadcrumbs, diced fat (in this case sheep's suet or tallow), eggs, pepper, saffron, and probably salt, boiled and served in slices. Probably quite a lot like the stuffed derma you can get in Kosher delis in New York. > > I don't know that I accept the idea, though, that haggis became a food > > of the lower classes; I guess that depends on what one considers lower > > classes. In Scotland, the farmers who butchered mutton and ate the > > innards that wouldn't keep well, and the nobles who hunted for various > > types of deer and made haggis from their innards, aren't what I'd call > > especially lower classes. > > Ok. Do we have any haggis recipes from before 1600? Are these English > haggis recipes that you mention from before 1600? Cindy posted at least one recipe from before 1600 that does indeed call for organ meats (intestines and the attached fat, or Ropis and their Tallow, or some such) boiled and chopped. As you've spotted, though, no fruit. Pat Fee mentioned fruit in her family cookbook. I wonder if perhaps this is a lowland Scots version of haggis, and when it's from? The English versions of haggis that call for breadcrumbs and cream are pretty late as a general thing. There's one, I think, in Gervase Markham's _The English Hus-Wife_ , published in 1615 but the recipes appear to be older than that. There may be one in Kenelm Digby's book, and I think there's one in Giulielma Penn's recipe collection (late 17th century) and in Martha Washington's Boke of Cookery. The latter, I believe, calls for fruit, but I'm not sure, and I'll have to go digging through books another time. Adamantius Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 09:15:36 PDT From: "pat fee" Subject: Re: SC - haggis >From: Stefan li Rous >Lady Katherine McGuire said: > > There is a recipe for Haggis in my family cook book. If I remember right > > it is made with oats, bits of pre cooked mutton,leeks, currents, cream, or > > good stock, with what ever dried fruit here was, and a bit of honey. This > > was cooked slightly to soften the oats, then stuffed in the "bag" and cooked > > for an unbelievable length of time, 6 hours I think. > >Thank you. Your cookbook does cover a wide spread of years. Is there any >indication of when this particular recipe dates from? Interesting. Fruit >and cream and mutton and oats. It seems to incorporate a wide variety of >what I was beginning think of as different types of haggis. I called the photographer who is working on the book and she looked up the haggis recipe I remembered. The first date on it was 1594. She looked through the section that the recipe was from and yes there were several others some just oats suet and leeks, some with organ meats and veggies, But the one spoke of has a note that seems to be atranslation of a note from the 1594 addition, This appeared on a 1878 recopy. it said in effect that this haggis had been served to a member of the English royal family on a visit to his Scots hunting lodge, and that it was a sore wast of good provider, as the person of royal birth had consumed enough to feed the household for a week. I went down to her studio this morning to see this for myself. There was also an added note that I copied and had my mother-in-law see if she could translate,that said that this haggis was not a proper haggis as it was designed to show the guest the wealth of the family and proper haggis( I think this refers to the haggis made with oats, leftover meat,leeks and broth. was a "goode fillen" for a honest hard working Scotsman Lady Katherine McGuire Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 01:58:16 -0500 From: LYN M PARKINSON Subject: Re: SC - haggis Stefan writes >> It seems to incorporate a wide variety of what I was beginning think of as different types of haggis.<< I recall seeing some period drawings of cooks working over huge cauldrons, which seem to contain a number of different items. Dorothy Hartly describes the technique of cooking multiple items in one pot, which seems to have gone on into her lifetime, in some parts of England. Perhaps our various haggis -es [haggii?] are, originally, simply combinations than can be easily cooked in this most convenient container--an animal's stomach. It later becomes Robert Burns' version. Allison allilyn at juno.com, Barony Marche of the Debatable Lands, Pittsburgh, PA Kingdom of Aethelmearc Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 15:04:33 -0400 From: Elaine Koogler Subject: Re: SC - Trimarian Haggis Some years ago, I picked up a Scottish "Cookery Book" put out by The Scottish Women's Rural Institutes, which has several recipes for haggis, including the following Sweet Haggis (it still uses a sheep's stomach, but you could still use a "bag"): 3 1/2 lbs. oatmeal, 2 lbs. suet, 2 lbs. raisins or sultannas, 1 tablespoon salt, l level dessertspoon black pepper, 3 dessertspoons sugar, 1 breakfast cup cold water. Method: Mix all together and put into haggis bag (sheep's or pig's stomach), sew up. Prick with a fork, tie in cloth, put into boiling water and boil for 3 hours. What you describe also could pass for a Clootie Dumpling: 3 oz. flour, 3 ozs. breadcrumbs, 3 ozs. chopped suet, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 2 ozs. sultannas, 1 teaspoon ground ginger or a grate of nutmeg, 2 ozs. currants, 1/2 tsp. bicarbonate of soda, 2 ozs. brown sugar, 1 tablespoonful syrup, about 3/4 cup sour milk or buttermilk. Mix all together with enough milk to make a fairly soft consistency. Dip a pudding cloth into boiling water and wring it. Dredge it well with flour, set it in a basin and spoon in the mixture. Draw together evenly; leave enough room for the pudding to swell and tie tightly with string. Place a plate in the bottom of the steaming pan. Have enough boiling water to well-cover the dumpling. Simmer for fully 2 hours, adding more boiling water at intervals. Turn out on to hot ashet (sic) Dredge with caster sugar and serve with hot sauce. Both of these sound great, though I've tried neither...and am not sure what "syrup" is, though it could be the "golden syrup" we discussed on another thread. As to what a hot "ashet" is, I haven't a clue. Nor do I know what the "hot sauce" is...there was no recipe for it! Kiri Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 09:05:09 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Haggis and Strawberries Lee-Gwen Booth wrote: > I was having a discussion with a (non-cook) SCA friend and she mentioned > that she felt that Haggis would have only been a peasant dish in period (her > grandparents were Scottish and she says they never ate Haggis partly for > this reason). The prejudice about offal being a food for the poor is comparatively modern, and haggis has, as far as I know, always been considered a rather festive dish (think, even in modern terms, of its presentation, flamed with whisky, accompanied by pipes, etc.). This is compounded by the fact that haggis has traditionally been made with the innards of fresh venison about as often as with those of sheep. You could argue that the shift in the socio-economic status of the dish occurred when sheep farming became considered less of an occupation for the well-to-do, but the fact is that there are several haggis recipes (some resembling modern recipes made with offal, fat, and some kind of grain or starch product, some not) in the known English medieval and renaissance recipe sources. These sources pretty much have to be viewed as either A) specifically aimed at the noble and/or the wealthy, or B) hand-copied or printed books that were expensive until the seventeenth century or so, in which case, see A) above. Adamantius Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 18:40:40 -0700 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - Haggis and Strawberries At 3:57 PM +1000 8/21/00, Lee-Gwen Booth wrote: >I was having a discussion with a (non-cook) SCA friend and she mentioned >that she felt that Haggis would have only been a peasant dish in period (her >grandparents were Scottish and she says they never ate Haggis partly for >this reason). She is mistaken. Haggis shows up in _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_, which is clearly a collection of recipes for the nobility. David/Cariadoc http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 09:29:17 -0500 From: Elaine Koogler Subject: SC - Haggis, revisited I have visited a site on the web, www.scottish-haggis.com, the website for McKean's of Scotland. They have a variety of haggis which they sell, along with other things. They also offer information on how to cook the "beastie". Kiri Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 12:15:03 -0800 From: Susan Fox-Davis Subject: Re: SC - Presents Stefan li Rous wrote: > Selene said: > > In other gifties, I got PLEYN DELIGHT > > and Clarissa Dickson Wright's little book on the Haggis. The more of > > her stuff > > I read, the more I wish we had her in the SCA, I know there are SCA > > people in the UK. > > I've not heard of this book (or author) before. More details please. > Does she give any documentably period recipes for haggis? For that > matter, I'm sure any documentably period Scottish recipes at all would > be of interest to many. "The Haggis : A Little History" by Clarissa Dickson Wright, Not really helpful for official documentation but lots of fun, it's just a wee trinket of a booklet, a four-inch square hardcover, you know the type. She does trace the history of haggis, both etymologically and gastronomically, back through SCA period and long before. The details and ordering information are on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565543645/ref=cm_mp_wl/105-4876789-9255153?colid=3CH33WX3IDH3Q Selene Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 20:46:26 EDT From: LrdRas at aol.com Subject: SC - Haggis Recipe-OOP craig.jones at airservices.gov.au writes: << Anyone got a recipe for haggis? Ras, surely you can help? >> A Detailed Haggis Recipe (from Michael Prothro) 1 sheep's stomach, thoroughly cleaned The liver, heart, and lights (lungs) of the sheep 1 lb Beef suet 2 large Onions 2 tb Salt 1 ts Freshly ground black pepper 1/2 ts Cayenne or red pepper 1/2 ts Allspice 2 lb Dry oatmeal (the old-fashioned, slow-cooking kind) 2-3 cups broth (in which the liver, heart and lights were cooked) What you need: Canning kettle or a large spaghetti pot, 16- to 20 quart size with a lid to fit it; meat grinder; cheesecloth What to do: If the butcher has not already cut apart and trimmed the heart, liver and lungs, do that first. It involves cutting the lungs off the windpipe, cutting the heart off the large blood vessels and cutting it open to rinse it, so that it can cook more quickly. The liver, too, has to be freed from the rest. Put them in a 4-quart pot with 2 to 3 cups water, bring to a boil, and simmer for about an hour and a half. Let it all cool, and keep the broth. Run the liver and heart through the meat grinder. Take the lungs and cut out as much of the gristly part as you easily can, then run them through the grinder, too. Next, put the raw beef suet through the grinder. As you finish grinding each thing, put it in the big kettle. Peel, slice and chop the onions, then add them to the meat in the kettle. Add the salt and spices and mix. The oatmeal comes next, and while it is customary to toast it or brown it very lightly in the oven or in a heavy bottomed pan on top of the stove, this is not absolutely necessary. When the oatmeal has been thoroughly mixed with the rest of it, add the 2 cups of the broth left from boiling the meat. See if when you take a handful, it sticks together. If it does, do not add the third cup of broth. If it is still crumbly and will not hold together very well, add the rest of the broth and mix thoroughly. Have the stomach smooth side out and stuff it with the mixture, about three-quarters full. Sew up the openings. Wrap it in cheesecloth, so that when it is cooked you can handle it. Now, wash out the kettle and bring about 2 gallons of water to a boil in it. Put in the haggis and prick it all over with a skewer so that it does not burst. You will want to do this a couple of times early in the cooking span. Boil the haggis gently for about 4 or 5 hours. If you did not have any cheesecloth for wrapping the haggis, you can use a large clean dishtowel. Work it under with kitchen spoons to make a sling with which you can lift out the haggis in one piece. You will probably want to wear lined rubber gloves to protect your hands from the hot water while you lift it out with the wet cloth. (You put the dish cloth in the pot only after the haggis is done; you do not cook the towel with the haggis as you would the cheesecloth.) Note: Even if the butcher has cleaned the stomach, you will probably want to go over it again. Turn the stomach shaggy side out and rinse. Rub it in a sinkful of cold water. Change the water and repeat as many times as necessary, until the water stays pretty clear and handling it does not produce much sediment as the water drains out of the sink. Ras Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 21:40:50 +0200 To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org From: "Cindy M. Renfrow" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Liber Cure Cocorum >A fifteenth century cookbook with a recipe for >Haggis (pp. 52 and 53)? Huzzah! Could this be >the long awaited period reference to the Queen of >Sausages? > >Mordonna There are plenty of haggis recipes in Harl. 279 & 4016. Here's just one example. Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xxv. Hagws of a schepe. Take [th]e Roppis with [th]e talour, & parboyle hem; [th]an hakke hem smal; grynd pepir, & Safroun, & brede, & 3olkys of Eyroun, & Raw kreme or swete Mylke: do al to-gederys, & do in [th]e grete wombe of the Schepe, [th]at is, the mawe; & [th]an se[the hym an serue forth ynne. 25. Haggis of a sheep. Take the Guts with the tallow, & parboil them; then hack them small; grind pepper, & Saffron, & bread, & yolks of Eggs, & Raw cream or sweet Milk: put all together, & put in the great stomach of the Sheep, that is, the stomach; & then seethe him and serve forth in. Cindy Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 18:34:40 +0200 To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org From: "Cindy M. Renfrow" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] period haggis recipes >Thank you, Cindy! I've got a number of recipes for haggis in my >haggis-msg file that I've collected over the years. Some are >"traditional". Some are definitely post-period, involving things >like red peppers. A few, such as this one, are period but best >described as "vegetarian" haggis. > >Do you have any period recipes that besides the grains and other >fillers, include the other organ meats? The "traditional" recipes >seem to include these, but the only documentably period recipes I >have so far don't. I see we've had part of this conversation before. Well, here's this recipe that includes pork, cheese, & pullets, but most of the haggis recipes just use tallow & filler, unless you count "roppis" as including organs other than the intestines. I think the dish was intended as a type of savory pudding, used as a meal extender. Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xxj. An Entrayle. Take a chepis wombe; take Polettys y-rostyd, & hew hem; [th]en take Porke, chese, & Spicery, & do it on a morter, & grynd alle y-fere; [th]en take it vppe with Eyroun y-swonge, & do in [th]e wombe, & Salt, & se[th]e hem tyl he be y-nowe, & serue forth. 21. An Entrail. Take a sheep's stomach; take Pullets roasted, & hew them; then take Pork, cheese, & Spicery, & put it in a mortar, & grind all together; then take it up with Eggs mixed, & put in the stomach, & Salt, & seethe them till he is enough, & serve forth. Cindy Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 11:28:03 -0700 From: Susan Fox-Davis To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Haggis: [Fwd: News of the Weird] Elizabeth A Heckert wrote: > On Mon, 20 Aug 2001 09:39:57 -0400 "Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy" > writes: > > While I don't consider myself a real authority on the subject, I will state > > that none of the dozens of haggises I have encountered myself have been > > gray, > > So what is good haggis like? I had some at the Richmond Highland > games and Bleeaahh! I happen to love scrapple, although I haven't had > any in years, and that was wonderfully spiced. The haggis had all the > qualities I despise in oatmeal: bland, glutinous and heavy. If it had > been spiced a bit, I would have enjoyed it, and from scotch eggs to > scones, the rest of the food at that fair is fantastic ... well maybe not > the deep-fried Mars bars, but then I've never worked up the intestinal > fortitude to try those ... > > Elizabeth The reason that Haggis made by most Americans is goopy and awful is because they use American rolled oats. Using steel-cut oats, the result is more like the real thing, a kind of oatmeal dressing with lamb giblets. I use plenty of onions and a large pinch of sage as well as salt and pepper. The color can be improved with the addition of commercial browning or just by sauteeing the organ meats, onions and/or toasting the oatmeal before stuffing into the paunch. But any steamed pudding is going to have a generally pale color as compared with baked or roasted products, just deal with it. Selene, Caid Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 16:51:56 -0400 From: "Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy" To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Haggis: [Fwd: News of the Weird] Elizabeth A Heckert wrote: > Steel cut oats makes sense! It's the only way you can get me within > ten feet of oatmeal. Also, as I said, the stuff I had tasted like > wallpaper paste. The funny thing is, I don't even remember the colour of > it, it must have looked fairly innocuous! Ecchhh. Actually, it's possible to use rolled oats in haggis, but the proportions need to be a little different. A proper haggis should be sort of hashy in consistency, sort of like a moist pilaf. One of the main secrets of attaining this consistency is to use a recipe that calls for added fat, rather than one which omits things like a small amount of grated suet. People do weird things like substituting a lot of liquid for the fat, creating a sloppy goo, or nothing in place of it, creating dry modelling clay. But 99% of all substandard haggis I've seen has been because the cook simply forgot that HAGGIS IS A *&$%^# at *&%# SAUSAGE. There is no such thing as an effective haggis without salt or a viable substitute. Ditto pepper, at the very least. Pennyroyal, or, for the squeamish, mint, are helpful additions, as is a pinch of nutmeg, although this is a little New Wave by haggis standards. Thyme is a good addition in lieu of the mints. So, we're talking about a sausage filled with dark-brown meats, mixed with onion, [usually] brown toasted oats, fat and herbs. Brown ales of various kinds occasionally go in to moisten the filling. The filling, when mixed and cooked, tends to look like darkish buckwheat kasha. How could it be gray? I submit the possibility that while there may be, or have been, some small percentage of gray haggis(es), they are probably not the norm, and I suspect that a lot of people who discuss the grayness of haggis have never actually tried it or even seen it. Adamantius Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:46:04 -0400 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] haggis? To: Cooks within the SCA On Aug 30, 2005, at 4:30 PM, Kathleen A Roberts wrote: > i may find myself entering a haggis cooking competition, if the > autocrats indeed go through with it. (throw down a gauntlet at ME, > will ye!?!?!?!) 8) > > anyone got any tried and true recipes? i know the alton brown > recipe, and several similar, but usually see 'spices' in the recipe > as opposed to exactly what spices. now, i know what you put in > scrapply, but that's a different animal... literally, i guess. > > oh yeah, and good scotch to go with it. I have a good one that I usually use, someplace. It's a synthesis of several published recipes, mostly the Elizabeth Luard version in "The Old World Kitchen", and some of the one in one of the Jeff Smith books. I think he advocates salt and pepper, plus, IIRC, nutmeg, and mint in lieu of pennyroyal. I'll see if I can locate it. 90% of the bad haggises I've encountered over the years have been made with insufficient salt and pepper. It's a floggin' sausage, and should be aggressively seasoned. Fresh-ground pepper is best. Also, my experience is that it is insanity to leave out the suet. Steer clear of the recipes that don't use them; it's not like leaving it out will make a low-cholesterol product; it's just a drier, slightly lower-cholesterol product. Adamantius Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 09:04:07 +1200 From: Adele de Maisieres Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] haggis? To: Cooks within the SCA Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote: > 90% of the bad haggises I've encountered over the years have been > made with insufficient salt and pepper. It's a floggin' sausage, and > should be aggressively seasoned. Fresh-ground pepper is best. Also, > my experience is that it is insanity to leave out the suet. Steer > clear of the recipes that don't use them; it's not like leaving it > out will make a low-cholesterol product; it's just a drier, slightly > lower-cholesterol product. Another common cause of Bad Haggis is the use of the wrong kind of oats-- ie rolled or flaked oats rather than steel-cut oats. The right oats make it lightish, slightly dryish, and slightly crumbly. The wrong oats make it solid, heavy, and gooey. I agree on the seasoning-- salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper, plus a little nutmeg or mace, or if you're inclined that way, a little allspice. -- Adele de Maisieres Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:20:31 -0400 From: "Mairi Ceilidh" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] haggis? To: "Cooks within the SCA" This is from a post I sent to a local cooks list quite some time ago. Getting the ingredients to make a proper haggis is very difficult lately, so I developed a recipe that works well, and seems to be acceptable even to native Scots. I am posting both a traditional recipe, and my version for use when the ingredients aren't available (i.e.: when you don't have your own sheep to butcher). Enjoy! I enjoy making haggis and eating it. Traditional Haggis 1 sheep's lungs (may be omitted if not available) 1 sheep's stomach 1 sheep heart 1 sheep liver 1 pound fresh suet (kidney leaf fat is preferred) 1 cup oatmeal (steel cut, not rolled oats) 3 onions, finely chopped 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 cup stock 1/2 cup Single Malt Whisky Wash lungs and stomach well, rub with salt and rinse. Remove membranes and excess fat. Soak in cold salted water for several hours. Place the lungs in a pan of cold water with the windpipe hanging over the edge (to facilitate the removal of any impurities) and slowly bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Chop fairly finely. Turn stomach inside out for stuffing. Cover heart and liver with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Chop heart and coarsely grate liver. Toast oatmeal in a skillet on top of the stove, stirring frequently, until golden. Chop suet finely. Combine all ingredients and mix well. Loosely pack mixture into stomach, about two-thirds full. Remember, oatmeal expands in cooking. Press any air out of stomach and truss securely. Put into boiling water to cover. Simmer for 3 hours, uncovered, adding more water as needed to maintain water level. Prick stomach several times with a sharp needle when it begins to swell; this keeps the bag from bursting. Place on a hot platter, removing trussing strings. Have a piper play Scotland the Brave as the platter is carried to the table. Have a bard ready, sgine dubh in hand, to pay honor to the haggis in the time honored words of the National Poet of Scotland (Ode to the Haggis by Robert Burns). Serve with Tatties and Neeps (potatoes and turnips, boiled and mashed together), Oat Cakes and Single Malt. Listen for the change in your patterns of speech. Now, it is all very well and good to provide recipes like this, but it is seldom that one has a chance to lay hands on all the authentic ingredients. For that reason, I developed a version that seems to be acceptable to native Scots and cause less aversion in PA Americans (yes, that stands for pansy a$$). Mother Mairi's Haggis 1 lb. ground lamb 1 lb. chicken livers 1 lb. hard leaf suet 1-2 large onions 1 cup McCann's Steel Cut Oats (available at Publix) Salt, Pepper, Nutmeg to taste 1/2 cup broth (from cooking livers) 1/2 cup Single Malt Chop onions and sauté with ground lamb. Boil livers in just enough salted water. Cool and grate. Chop suet finely. (The chopping can be done in a food processor). Toast the oats until they are light golden brown. Mix all ingredients, and wrap in a double layer of cheese cloth (or place in a pudding bag). Be sure to do this over the pot in which you plan to cook the haggis so that none of the juices are lost. Wrap tightly and put in pop with the fold down. Add water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours. Remove to a plate and open cheese cloth carefully. Even more carefully transfer haggis to a large sheet of plastic wrap. Fold plastic to completely encase and place on a heated serving platter. (Putting it in the plastic facilitates serving and makes the bards performance work better when he plunges the sgine dubh into the "steaming, reeking pudding".) Serve as noted above. Have fun! Haggis is not the evil some make it out to be (neither is fruit cake). Most people who turn up their noses at organ meats are to ignorant or prejudiced to try them. I have no patience with those who would condemn things they have never tasted. Just don't offer me chilled monkey brains or eyeball soup. Even I have my limits. Mairi Ceilidh Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:27:12 -0500 From: silverr0se at aol.com Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] looking for maire's haggis recipe To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org I can testify that _this_ haggis is absolutely delicious and still fun for freaking out otherwise stalwart fighter-types. Renata -----Original Message----- From: selene at earthlink.net To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org Sent: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 7:37 AM Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] looking for maire's haggis recipe I have a haggis-inspired sweet pudding recipe: Sweet Haggis Adapted from the Scottish Womens' Rural Association Cookery Book A subtletie of sorts, really a steamed oat pudding with no nasty old sheep-guts. 1/4 lb. beef suet 1/2 cup raisins 2 cups oatmeal [toast it first] 2 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. pepper 3 tbsp. sugar 1/2 cup cold water muslin bag to cook it in Toast oatmeal at 400?F for 10 minutes. Skin and chop or grate suet finely. Mix all ingredients together until soft consistancy. Wet muslin bag and put mixture into it until more than half full [to allow for expansion of oatmeal]. Sew or tie up tightly and put it on an old plate inside a large pot of boiling water. Boil for 3 hours; then serve with all due ceremony, perhaps accompanied with fake bagpipes and fake poetry. I use half steel-cut and half rolled oats, the former for chewy consistancy and the latter for binding power. The true vegetarian crowd can use shortening in a pinch. I also like to add 1 tsp. mixed spice to the mix. Happy Hogmany, Selene Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:38:37 -0500 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] haggis question To: Cooks within the SCA On Jan 4, 2007, at 3:00 PM, Kathleen A Roberts wrote: > while fixating on early irish food research, a question > popped to mind... > > is haggis strictly scottish, never traveling beyond the > borders, or would it be a dish that would have been > known/done/served around the british? is it merely a > generalized pudding or a country specific treasure? There are non-Scottish references to haggis; I suppose it's conceivable they might be more or less coincidental. So, for example, we have 14th or 15th-century English recipes for Haggas d'Almayne (whose name suggests a German origin, which is odd, in a way). But in addition, we have northern English and Lowland Scots haggis recipes that are distinctly different, but still recognizable variants (for example, one in which the gut is cooked and chopped into the pudding rather than used as a casing, or an 18th-century English one that calls for cream and breadcrumbs instead of oats). > i suppose this comes from looking for things people have > heard of and that there are recipes for as opposed to the > dominant 'nothing written down' i keep banging into with > the irish food. We just don't seem to have a lot of the same type of evidence for Scottish and Irish foods that we have, say, for English eating habits in period. There's some, but probably not as much or of the same type. It would be tempting to assume that there's some very old Irish haggis equivalent (if that's where you're going with this), but apart from English-style white puddings, drisheen (which is sort of like sheep's-blood cheese), and a mock goose in modern Irish cuisine that calls for a hog's maw to be stuffed with potatoes, onions, and fat, and roasted, I'm not aware of any real evidence for one. Adamantius Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:03:47 -0500 From: Johnna Holloway Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] haggis question To: Cooks within the SCA It may not always have been a sheep's stomach. Wikipedia mentions It's unknown who discovered and prepared this for the first time. The most likely origin of the dish is from the days of the old Scottish cattle drovers . When the men left the highlands to drive their cattle to market in Edinburgh the women would prepare rations for them to eat during the long journey down through the glens . They used the ingredients that were most readily available in their homes and conveniently packaged them in a sheep's stomach allowing for easy transportation during the journey. Another theory, put forward by food historian Clarissa Dickson-Wright , is that haggis was invented as a way of cooking quick-spoiling offal near the site of a hunt, without the need to carry along an additional cooking vessel. The liver and kidneys could be grilled directly over a fire, but this treatment was unsuitable for the stomach, intestines, or lungs. Chopping up the lungs and stuffing the stomach with them and whatever fillers might have been on hand, then boiling the assembly ? likely in a vessel made from the animal's hide ? was one way to make sure these parts did not go to waste. (Dickson-Wright 12).Dickson Wright, Clarissa (1998). /The Haggis: A Little History/. Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 1-56554-364-5 . Other theories are based on Scottish slaughtering practices. When a Chieftan or Laird required an animal to be slaughtered for meat (whether sheep or cattle) the workmen were allowed to keep the offal as their share. Johnnae Date: Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:41:54 -0500 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" To: Cooks within the SCA Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] 'Tis the season. On Jan 1, 2010, at 2:35 AM, Antonia di Benedetto Calvo wrote: > I also think lungs + the right oats are what make a really nice texture. They do. I have pretty severe issues with rolled oats in most applications, except maybe brewing. If you do ever do have occasion to make a haggis without lungs, a roughly equivalent amount of spleen (we get pork ones around here) work pretty well as a better option than simply omitting the ultra-rich, flavorful, gamy, slightly spongy meat. When it's ground the texture issues are largely irrelevant anyway. I guess one could argue that making a haggis without having access to freshly slaughtered sheep parts is sort of like putting the cart before the sheep anyway, so by extension, a lot of what might have been seen as sacrosanct could be... well... reexamined. Adamantius Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 09:06:39 -0500 From: "Terry Decker" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Haggis Tempest To: "Cooks within the SCA" "HAGGIS was invented by the English before being hijacked by Scottish nationalists, a food historian has claimed. Catherine Brown has discovered references to the dish in a recipe book dated 1615, /The English Hus-wife/ by Gervase Markham." Johnnae ============== I'm having a little line trouble with my connection, so I'm not able to pull in all the articles, so if I err pray forgive me. As I understand Brown's argument, haggis first appears in Markham, the Scottish use of the term haggis only begins in the 18th Century, ergo haggis is an English dish only recently adopted by the Scots. While the recipe in Markham may be the closest to modern haggis, there are recipes for the dish in Liber Cure Cocurum and the Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, predating Markham by almost 200 years. As for the late adoption of haggis by the Scots, William Dunbar uses the term in The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, written in the first decade of the 16th Century, a century before Markham. Haggis may have been an English dish originally (possibly adopted and adapted from the Romans), but it's not as recent addition to the Scottish table as Ms Brown seems to think. Bear Date: Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:19:42 -0500 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" To: Cooks within the SCA Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] 'Tis the season. On Jan 1, 2010, at 1:40 AM, Antonia di Benedetto Calvo wrote: <<< My understanding is that US shoppers have the same problem we do in NZ-- the authorities are hysterical and have banned sheep's lungs, which makes it a lot trickier to produce a haggis. >>> Seriously? Lungs are lungs. It's really the fat that makes the difference. I've made perfectly decent haggis using veal livers and hearts, pork spleens in lieu of lungs (basically you need some fairly vascular tissue, lots of blood and strong, gamy flavors). Not indistinguishable from the same thing made from sheep parts, but very similar, and for the many, many people who haven't tried the real thing, and many who have, it comes pretty close. I wouldn't say it's exactly the same, but it's close enough to quash the "the best is the enemy of the good" crowd. Adamantius Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 12:47:31 -0800 From: lilinah at earthlink.net To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] [SCA-cooks] haggis RESEND with special characters replaced with plain vowels and (much) additional info. There is a 16th c. recipe for a Persian dish called gipa (hard g, as is good), which is strikingly like haggis. Here is the current version of my translation from Fragner's German translation: Bert G. Fragner "Zur Erforschung der kulinarischen Kultur Irans" (Toward an Exploration of Iranian Culinary Arts) in Die Welt des Islams 23-24 (1984), pp. 320-360. From Maddatal-hayat, resala dar 'elm-e tabbaki ("The substance of life, a treatise on the art of cooking") written in 1003 AH (September 16, 1594 to Sept. 1595 CE) by Master Ostad Nurollah, Chief Court Cook of Shah 'Abbas I (r. 1587-1629) gipa-polaw (n.40) in Fragner, pp. 350-351 Know that, cooked according to rule and regulation, gipa is a tasty dish, when it is prepared properly. Thus it is done: Clean rumen stomachs, abdominal networks and mesentery[i.] / chitterlings (shirdan va charba-ye ruda va shekanba) of sheep several times and afterwards rub with Iraqi soap (?, sabun-e 'eraqi) using a napkin and then rinse again. Then shred/chop a lot of meat, and it is important that it has no bones. Fat-tail from sheep is used in large quantities, such that cracklings are processed and removed. [In the hot fat] put onions in the weight of two mann according to Tabriz measurement, also fifty mesqal[ii.] of spices, valerian (?, sonbola[iii.]) and davala (probably a kind tree lichen) in necessary quantity, and finally a half-mann of rice. Some people add saffron as well. The quantity of meat should be two mann and tail fat equal to one mann -- these are the ingredients for a whole meal. All this is mixed [over the fire]. The lower the liquid, the better it is, because so much onion is used for this dish. If one uses too much liquid, the food loses its consistency and is overcooked. Now the sheep's rumen and the other [innards] are filled, as should be, so they do not burst. Once they are filled, they are sewn shut, placed in a kettle and cooked, until they are soft. Then wipe them off and wash them in cold water. If one lines the bottom of the kettle with sheep ribs, [the gipa] is particularly good. The latter is a creation of my very own self! Then layer the rumen stomach and the other [guts] nicely [in a vessel] over one another, drip fat and clear meat soup (shorba) there over and let the whole marinade. The fire must be set up so [low] that the dish simmers very slowly until morning and, when it is done, is not burned, but soft and lightly browned. In the morning, place a thin flat bread on it and the gipa done. 40) gipa is obviously a very traditional category of dishes in which rice is combined with offal. In cookbooks from the 20th century gipa-dishes are no longer mentioned with one exception. Only Forough Hekmat (The Art of Persian Cooking, Tehran, 1961, p. 82 f.) describes two gipa recipes. With regard to Boshaq-e at'ema[iv.], he says explicitly that we are dealing with very old-fashioned food, that traditionally was eaten in the early morning (similarly to kalla-pacha, soup made from sheep's heads and feet). As already mentioned, Ba'urchi-Baghdadi[v.] (1521) still gives a total of nine gipa recipes (Karnama, p. 166-172). *** my notes *** [1.] Mesentery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesentery (not sure what American butchers call it, if they call it anything... anyone know?) [ii.] mesqal = mithqal [iii.] sonbola = sumbul, which often = jatamansi = spikenard [iv.] Boshaq-e at'ema (died 1426 or 1436) was a poet, author, and lexicographer who wrote works in the language of food, but whose subtext was social and political criticism. Boshaq is a contraction of Abu Ishaq, meaning Father of Isaac; standard naming form in the area, to call a married adult after the name of their first born son (a woman could be Umm Ishaq, Mother of Isaac). ''-e at'ema'' means ''of food''. [v.] Mohammad 'Ali Ba'urchi-Baghdadi is the author of the oldest known Persian recipe collection, Kar-nameh (or Karnama) dar bab-e tabbakhi va san'at-e an ("Manual on cooking and its craft"), written for a Safavid prince and dated 1521. The Mongolian word "ba'urchi" means "cook" and he came from a Turkish-speaking family. His father was a trained chef in the service of the Aq-Qoyunlu Prince Budaq Mirza and taught his son his skill. Some scholars have speculated that Nurollah was a descendant of Ba'urchi Baghdadi, as several of Nurollah's ancestors had been involved in the earlier Safavid court kitchen. (side note: Alot is the name of a town in India, not a word in English. If one means a large quantity, it is two words: a lot) -- Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM] the persona formerly known as Anahita Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 08:09:58 +0000 (GMT) From: Volker Bach To: Cooks within the SCA Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern haggis It's not Middle Eastern, but there is a recipe for stuffed sheep's stomach from sixteenth-century Germany. Take lean veal and clean bacon, chop it together small, add small raisins, and break four eggs into it. Salt it, season it with pepper and various spices, and make it neither too thick nor too thin with the eggs. Then take it, fill it into the cleaned sheeps' stomachs, each only half full, close them with a wooden skewer at the top, lay them in boiling water and boil them like sausages until they are well cooked and all hard. Then take them out of the water and cut them into nice slices. Make a fine brown sauce of lebkuchen and wine, season it with all spices, and give it a lovely savour. Then place the abovementioned slices in it, salt it and taste it. (Klosterkochbuch III.30) Unfortunately, provenance and transmission are lousy for this one. At some point an original manuscript existed, but it was lost in WWII (we think) and all we have now is a free transcrip?tion into modern High German from the nineteenth century. I plan to triy it as soon as I can get my hands on a sheep's stomach. The filling works nicely in a puddingcloth. ============= Stefan li Rous schrieb am 6:35 Dienstag, 5.November 2013: On the Facebook Cooks Group, Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya said: <<< Stuffed sheep's stomach appears in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman language cookbooks, as qiba, gipa, and zerbudil, respectively. Rice is often used as the grain filler, there is usually a large quantity of chopped onions, and sometimes the sheep's trotters are included? >>> I have a bunch of haggis recipes, both period and non. Both vegetarian and traditional. But all I think all of these have a Scottish origin. Could you please detail some of these Middle Eastern versions? I'm particularly interested in how they vary from the Scottish ones. The rice, in particular, appears to be a change. But then rice doesn't grow in Scotland and I suspect oats don't grow that well in the Middle East. Stefan =============== Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 10:49:43 -0200 From: Ana Vald?s To: Volker Bach , Cooks within the SCA Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern haggis In Sweden it's called p?lsa, its made in a pig stomach, filled with oats or barley, lungs, liver and ansjovis. Ana On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:09 AM, Volker Bach wrote: <<< It's not Middle Eastern, but there is a recipe for stuffed sheep's stomach from sixteenth-century Germany. Take lean veal and clean bacon, chop it together small, add small raisins, and break four eggs into it. Salt it, season it with pepper and various spices, and make it neither too thick nor too thin with the eggs. Then take it, fill it into the cleaned sheeps' stomachs, each only half full, close them with a wooden skewer at the top, lay them in boiling water and boil them like sausages until they are well cooked and all hard. Then take them out of the water and cut them into nice slices. Make a fine brown sauce of lebkuchen and wine, season it with all spices, and give it a lovely savour. Then place the above mentioned Slices in it, salt it and taste it. (Klosterkochbuch III.30) >>> Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 23:52:55 -0200 From: Ana Vald?s To: Cooks within the SCA Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern haggis << How is "p?lsa" spelled? And what is "ansjovis"? Stefan >> P?LSA (o with two dots over it) ANSJOVIS are herring. Ana Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:24:19 -0600 From: "Terry Decker" To: "Cooks within the SCA" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern haggis <<< And what is "ansjovis"? Stefan >>> Try "anchovy." Ansjovis refers to Engraulis encrasicolus, the European anchovy, or more broadly any small similar looking fish. Bear Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 12:29:07 -0800 (GMT-08:00) From: To: SCA-Cooks Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern haggis For the late 16th c. gipa, here's a re-post of a message i sent to this list Sunday 6 February 2011 There is a 16th c. recipe for a Persian dish called gipa (hard g, as in good), which is strikingly like haggis. Here is the current version of my translation from Fragner's German translation: Bert G. Fragner "Zur Erforschung der kulinarischen Kultur Irans" (Toward an Exploration of Iranian Culinary Arts) in Die Welt des Islams 23-24 (1984), pp. 320-360. From Maddatal-hayat, resala dar 'elm-e tabbaki ("The substance of life, a treatise on the art of cooking") written in 1003 AH (September 16, 1594 to Sept. 1595 CE) by Master Ostad Nurollah, Chief Court Cook of Shah 'Abbas I (r. 1587-1629) gipa-polaw (n.40) in Fragner, pp. 350-351 Know that, cooked according to rule and regulation, gipa is a tasty dish, when it is prepared properly. Thus it is done: Clean rumen stomachs, abdominal networks and mesentery[i.] / chitterlings (shirdan va charba-ye ruda va shekanba) of sheep several times and afterwards rub with Iraqi soap (?, sabun-e 'eraqi) using a napkin and then rinse again. Then chop a lot of meat, and it is important that it has no bones. Fat-tail from sheep is used in large quantities, such that cracklings are processed and removed. [In the hot fat] put onions in the weight of two mann according to Tabriz measurement, also fifty mesqal[ii.] of spices, spikenard (sonbola[iii.]) and davala [probably a kind tree lichen] in necessary quantity, and finally a half-mann of rice. Some people add saffron as well. The quantity of meat should be two mann and tail fat equal to one mann -- these are the ingredients for a whole meal. All this is mixed [over the fire]. The lower the liquid, the better it is, because so much onion is used for this dish. If one uses too much liquid, the food loses its consistency and is overcooked. Now the sheep's rumen and the other [innards] are filled, as should be, so they do not burst. Once they are filled, they are sewn shut, placed in a kettle and cooked, until they are soft. Then wipe them off and wash them in cold water. If one lines the bottom of the kettle with sheep ribs, [the gipa] is particularly good. The latter is a creation of my very own self! Then layer the rumen stomach and the other [guts] nicely [in a vessel] over one another, drip fat and clear meat soup (shorba) thereover and let the whole marinade. The fire must be set up so [low] that the dish simmers very slowly until morning and, when it is done, is not burned, but soft and lightly browned. In the morning, place a thin flat bread on it and the gipa done. 40) [Bert Fragner's note] gipa is obviously a very traditional category of dishes in which rice is combined with offal. In cookbooks from the 20th century gipa-dishes are no longer mentioned with one exception. Only Forough Hekmat (The Art of Persian Cooking, Tehran, 1961, p. 82 f.) describes two gipa recipes. With regard to Boshaq-e at'ema[iv.], he says explicitly that we are dealing with very old-fashioned food, that traditionally was eaten in the early morning (similarly to kalla-pacha, soup made from sheep's heads and feet). As already mentioned, Ba'urchi-Baghdadi[v.] (1521) still gives a total of nine gipa recipes (Karnama, p. 166-172). *** my notes *** [1.] Mesentery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesentery) i'm not sure what American butchers call it, if they call it anything... anyone know? [ii.] mesqal = mithqal [iii.] sonbola = sumbul, which often = jatamansi = spikenard [iv.] Boshaq-e at'ema (died 1426 or 1436) was a poet, author, and lexicographer who wrote works in the language of food, but whose subtext was social and political criticism. Boshaq is a contraction of Abu Ishaq, meaning Father of Isaac; standard naming form in the area, to call a married adult after the name of their first born son (a woman could be Umm Ishaq, Mother of Isaac). ''-e at'ema'' means ''of food''. [v.] Mohammad 'Ali Ba'urchi-Baghdadi is the author of the oldest known Persian recipe collection, Kar-nameh (or Karnama) dar bab-e tabbakhi va san'at-e an ("Manual on cooking and its craft"), written for a Safavid prince and dated 1521. The Mongolian word "ba'urchi" means "cook" and he came from a Turkish-speaking family. His father was a trained chef in the service of the Aq-Qoyunlu Prince Budaq Mirza and taught his son his skill. Some scholars have speculated that Nurollah was a descendant of Ba'urchi Baghdadi, as several of Nurollah's ancestors had been involved in the earlier Safavid court kitchen. (side note: Alot is the name of a town in India, not a word in English. If one means a large quantity, it is two words: a lot) -- Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM] the persona formerly known as Anahita Edited by Mark S. Harris haggis-msg Page 3 of 48