[Sca-cooks] Haggis Tempest

[Johnna Holloway]

I am still trying to work my way back to the initial article.
Some of the actual letters and comments to the English papers actually
noted the earlier recipes in Austin's Two 15th Century Cookery Books.
I suspect the Sunday papers will do also on the controversy and those will
be online soon.
I did like the phrasing of McCall Smith
"Of course there was no published Scottish recipe for haggis before 
then, for the simple reason that it would have been quite unnecessary 
for Scots to publish a recipe for something that everybody in Scotland 
knew how to make. Why state the obvious? It’s as simple as that."

Now where have we heard that argument made time and again.
But the fact remains the Scots didn't publish a cookbook in Scotland 
until 1736, so
published recipes come rather late into the game.

I am wondering what set it all off at this time.

Johnnae

Terry Decker wrote:
> "HAGGIS was invented by the English before being hijacked by Scottish
> nationalists, a food historian has claimed.
> 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