All hail to the Chieftain of puddings

By CATHERINE BROWN

CATHERINE BROWN and illustrator FIONA TAYLOR honour the haggis with an Address for the 1990s.

LYING amidst the mashed tatties and neeps, a misshapen round of curves and bumps, which once served as a sheep's stomach, you are an odd sight to have inspired such passion in a nation, and a grace as long as the poet's arm. For more than 200 years, a people have claimed you as their national dish, ''Great Chieftan o' the Puddin-race''.

In terms of initial eye-appeal you rate badly. But as the knife slices deep, and the contents are released, then comes the glorious sight: a bursting of tight skin to reveal the worth within: a dark meaty mixture -- warm-reekin' -- with onions and spices for piquancy and mealy oatmeal to balance the richness.

When Robert Burns decided to honour you with The Address, which he wrote during his first winter in Edinburgh in 1786, he and his cronies sitting round to eat, did not use a knife and fork but a horn spoon, wielding it in the same way as it was dug communally into the porridge pot when put in the centre of the table.

''Then, horn for horn they stretch an' strive, Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive . . .''

The moist crumbly texture just holds together, not mushy, but yet not dry. Not too smooth, and not too coarse, it has a satisfying bite in the chew of pinhead oatmeal amidst the finely chopped and grated heart, liver and lungs of the sheep.

Gradually, the final scrapings are cleaned from the skin and eaters are content. Content with just your taste? As Burns describes your devouring, nothing else competes, no neeps, no tatties, no drink. So are we to take it that you should really be enjoyed in solitary splendour? Were the other trappings now associated with you just things which were added on by those who adopted you to commemorate Burns's birthday? There is no way of knowing, but perhaps there is a clue in the simple style of eighteenth-century peasant eating.

Before meat and two veg. became the custom, a few boiled potatoes with butter or cheese made a dinner. It is most likely that you were consumed in the same plain manner, accompanied by no more than a drink, most likely tavern ale or maybe whisky. With an influx of Highlanders to lowland towns in the late eighteenth century, thousands of illicit stills existed in basements brewing what Burns described as ''the rascally Highland gill''. But whether with whisky or ale, you were a gutsy dish of the people at a time when the divide between rich and poor could be seen in their different foods.

Burns saw it all too clearly as he moved from fashionable Edinburgh drawing-room to bawdy tavern. The rich were eating French ragouts and fricassees, the kind of dishes which required the best meat and the most elaborate sauces. They were regarded as refined and elegant but they made Burns sick. He challenged those who pandered to such trash not to look down ''wi' sneering, scornfu' view on sic a dinner''. A dinner which he thought marked out the strong, healthy rustic haggis-fed from the withered ''O how unfit!'' wealthy.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o'fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' pray'r,
Gie her a Haggis!

ANCIENT Greece provides the first evidence of recipes for stuffing the stomach bag of the animal with the innards. The idea is immortalised by Aristophanes in The Clouds: ''So was I served with stuffed sheep's paunch . . .'' It is possibly of even greater antiquity than this, since it is a logical thing to do with the otherwise unattractive internal bits and pieces of a dead carcass.

The Romans took the idea from the Greeks and developed and expanded the whole concept. They introduced it to Britain, and also to France. In Britain, the fresh raw sausage, subsequently cooked, became common but in France the art was developed to a much higher degree with complicated mixtures and heavy spicing which laid the foundation for the French charcuterie tradition. While the French don't seem to have taken to the haggis, referring to it as a St Andrew's Pudding on one occasion, it is possible that the Scots, encouraged by their ancient French connections, felt more confident in preserving the haggis. At any rate, it is true that the English were as fond of haggis as the Scots up to the time that Burns was writing The Address.

So why did the Scots continue to cherish the haggis and the English abandon it? If The Address had not been written and the dish not taken over as traditional Burns Supper fare, there is a chance that it might not have survived in Scotland either. Or would it? Before the Supper phenomenon it was an everyday, all-the-year-round dish and so -- as any High Street butcher will tell you -- it remains.

There is also the fact that haggis and the Scottish character have some things in common. The thriftiness of the dish appeals because making a good thing out of cheap odds and ends is hard for the Scots to resist. I think it is also true that there is an element of uncivilised barbarism about the haggis, which is totally lacking in the sausage, and this appeals to the romantic nature of the Scots. Other more practical arguments hinge on the poverty of the Scots and the fact that sheep, after the Clearances, were in plentiful supply. The use of oatmeal in balancing the richness was an ingenious Scottish invention which does not appear in the English eighteenth-century haggis when oatmeal would have been regarded as fuel for horses, not men.

So where does the Scottish-sounding name come from? Not from any Scottish language connection it seems. A ''haggas'' pudding is how it is described in early cookery books. ''Puddings,'' the colloquial term for the innards of an animal, was also used as the name of the mixture stuffed into them and cooked.

Etymologists differ on the derivation, but Gillian Edwards in Hogmanay and Tiffany (1970) claims that: ''Some derive this word from the French 'hachis', which developed through the spellings 'hache' and 'hachy' into English 'hash' . . . Except that in Cumberland haggis was called hash pudding, there seems no definite connection. Another suggestion is pinned to the old verb 'to hag' meaning to cut or chop, or the Anglo Saxon 'haecan', to hack into pieces. Or again it may be related to 'haggess', the ancient name for a magpie,'' a connection which is made between the nature of the dish, as an accumulation of bits and pieces, and the habits of the bird.

COOKING AND EATING HAGGIS

Just as every butcher has his own sausage recipe, so for haggis. There is tremendous variation and much debate and argument about who makes the best. An award is given each year for the best haggis maker. My award for 1991 goes to the butchers, MacKenzie, in Newtonmore.

Their haggis turned up on the dinner plate at Gaskmore House Hotel in Laggan. The chef, Michael Dean, from Belfast but trained by Anton Mossiman in London, produced an interesting Scottish-Irish plateful of roasted cutlets from a rack of Scottish lamb, propped up by a mound of MacKenzie haggis, surrounded by colcannon, garnished with chives, and some bashed neeps. There was roast lamb gravy among it too. He also deserves an award for originality and good cooking.

The MacKenzie haggis is made by Ruth Stewart who, with her husband Colin, now runs what was originally her father's shop. She continues to use her father's recipe, mincing the cooked pluck with ''a lot onions'' and beef suet. She controls the seasoning herself, tasting as she goes, using only salt and ground white pepper. Some haggis-makers use the offal from other animals, some use dried onion, some omit the beef suet. She thinks the secret of her haggis is to stick to the original ingredients. Dried onion flakes will not do, nor will pig or calves' liver. Mid-week haggis-eating in Newtonmore consumes most of the 6000 lbs she makes every week. She reckons that every family in Newtonmore buys one at least once a week. It doesn't really surprise me.

SWEET HAGGIS (a variation)

While my great-grandmother always made it in a cloth, my grandmother made it in a bowl. Now we have started making it in the microwave. It's not the same, my father says, but admits that the difference is not huge. Whatever the method, it is best sliced hot with fried bacon for breakfast or high tea. Cold slices can be wrapped in foil and reheated in the oven or fried in bacon fat.

INGREDIENTS:

12 oz (250 g) medium oatmeal

4 oz (250 g) flour

12 oz (350 g) beef suet, finely chopped

4 oz (125 g) soft brown sugar

4 oz (125 g) currants

4 oz (125 g) raisins

Salt and pepper

Water to mix

Cooking: Cover and steam for four hours or place in microwave and cook for 10 minutes. Leave to rest for 10 minutes then cook for another 10. Turn out and eat hot or slice and reheat. Serve with bacon and bread and butter.

Sat 25-Jan-1992

Copyright © 2001 StAndrews.com