Festive offal dish (the dinner)
Haggis with Neeps & Tatties
FestiveDocumented🧂 🌶️moyen2 h
A rustic pudding of minced sheep offal with oatmeal, onion and plenty of pepper, traditionally cooked in the animal's stomach. Served mashed with swede (neeps) and potatoes (tatties), it is the festive dish par excellence.
Why this dish? National dish of great Scottish meals that Hume, a noted gourmand with a generous appetite and proud of his country, served to his guests — the embodiment of the good Scottish fare he defended with wit.
Do not pull that face, my friend! I know a stranger recoils from haggis, but this, I assure you, is the tastiest of poor man's meats turned philosopher's feast. The heart and liver are minced with a good measure of oatmeal, peppered without stint, and the whole cooked in the stomach until the house smells divine. At my Edinburgh table, I have seen more than one skeptic converted by the mere aroma. Eat, and judge afterwards — that is my method in all things.
Ingredients
- •Sheep's pluck (heart, liver, lungs) — one complete set (base)
- •Suet — a good amount (richness)
- •Toasted oatmeal — generously (binder and texture)
- •Onions — 2 or 3 (aromatic)
- •Black pepper, salt — abundantly (signature spice)
- •Sheep's stomach — 1 (casing)
- •Swede (neeps) — as needed (accompaniment)
How it was made : Haggis used perishable offal after slaughter, cooked in the stomach which served as natural casing and cooking pot. The toasted oats extended the meat to feed a whole household. Robert Burns would celebrate it in 1786, shortly after Hume's death.
Sources : Robert Burns, Address to a Haggis (1786) · F. Marian McNeill, The Scots Kitchen (1929)