This Scottish recipe comes from the 1700s. It shows the Scots knack of making something out of almost nothing. I believe haggis was perhaps the first processed meat. Scottish winters can be hard (temperatures in Scotland this year have been as low as 20 degrees below zero!). Scotland is about 1000 miles north of Pittsburgh! As autumn drew to a close in Scotland, people looked to the oncoming winter and the inevitable shortage of food. So when they killed the last livestock of the year, everything was used. Some of the internal organs were mixed with grain and suet, and made into a sausage, which when cooked, and preserved by the icy cold, would last through the winter. This 18th century recipe comes from member Lucy Stewart-Hykes: “Take the lights, heart and kidneys of a lamb or sheep, but not the liver; boile them, and pick them, and pick out the strings; then shred them small with good store of Beef Suet mingled with Currans, Nutmeg and Salt, grated Bread & Sweet Herbs shred small; the yolks of 3 Eggs and 4 spoonfulls of Cream, stirre them together and put them in the Paunch of a sheep, scowred & cleansed and seasoned for 3 days before; Let it boil 4 houres; serve it in the Paunch; give it a gash carelessly, then it will rune out green.”

NOTE: Our Burns’ Dinner haggis comes from Cameron’s Market of New Jersey.  It is prepared using a traditional Scottish recipe – and it doesn’t “rune out green”!  Nor, I might add, do the guests!