The largest haggis producer in Scotland is looking to change its recipe to circumvent the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1971 ban.
LONDON — Scotland’s signature dish of haggis is an acquired taste, with its mix of sheep’s heart, liver and lungs being minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, stock and spices.
Not that U.S. consumers would know, that is, due to the offal dish’s traditional recipe being banned for more than 50 years. In 1971, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ruled animal lungs unfit for human consumption.
But Scotland’s largest haggis producer is hoping it has found a way to circumvent the ban. Not content with being locked out of a market containing 335 million people, Macsween of Edinburgh is looking to get in on the act by producing a new recipe that omits sheep lung.
It seems Scottish Americans marking Burns Night on Saturday, Jan. 25, might have to make do with the U.S.-made haggis imitations this year, but by 2026 they could be celebrating with something closer to the real deal.
The question is, will it matter that the haggis imports are not following the original recipe? Scottish journalist Alex Massie, a former Washington correspondent for The Scotsman newspaper, used to complain that the American version without lungs “run to stodge all too easily.”
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But Lars Kjaer, an anthropologist and historian at Northeastern University, says adapting recipes and traditions is a well-trodden path.
“So many of the old traditions that we think we’ve done since forever, once you look at them more closely, they turn out to be relatively recent,” says the associate professor.
“The 19th century is a huge century for the invention of traditions — it is around this time that Burns Night gets established, for example.
“I think people can rest assured that this change with haggis is merely the most recent in a long story of adaptations, of adapting tradition and custom to the new possibilities allowed by the market, by technology and — in this context — the regulatory environment.
“It has always been like that. We just like to kid ourselves that our traditions are eternal and unchanging,” he says.
Kjaer, who teaches on Northeastern’s London campus, suggests that for the next generation of Scottish Americans enjoying a Burns supper, when it comes to sampling a lung-less haggis produced by the likes of Macsween for the American market, “that is going to be what haggis tastes like.”
Haggis has been around for centuries, with the earliest reference to it said to have been in a 13th-century poem. The dish was popularized by Robert Burns in his 1786 poem “Address To A Haggis.” His friends, to mark the fifth anniversary of the poet’s death in 1801, decided to get together on what would have been his birthday — Jan. 25 — and serve up haggis in his honor.
The tradition stuck and is now marked by Scots the world over, celebrating their heritage with a meal of haggis, neeps and tatties (swede and potatoes) — but not before the haggis has been paraded into the room behind a bagpiper and had Burns’ poetic tribute read out.
Priyan Khakhar, an assistant professor of international business at Northeastern, says Scottish haggis producers have a “really good opportunity” if they can adapt their product to the U.S. market because there is already a cultural overlap.
With a shared language and Britain’s role in the early history of North America, Khakhar says the cultural distance is smaller between the U.K. and the U.S. than it is between, for example, France and Britain, which are geographically closer but less culturally similar. That “smaller cultural distance will work in the favor of exporters,” he argues.
There is also the fact that Americans are familiar with elements of Scottish culture already — something known as the “country of origin factor.”
“Scotland already has that,” Khakhar points out. “Scottish whisky is world famous. We start every year singing ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ This is what translates into the concept of having soft power, just like the Scottish kilt and bagpipes are an expression of soft power. That can sometimes help with trade.”
Along with Burns Night, there is also Tartan Day in the U.S. Held annually on April 6, it is a major event in some cities, with versions of Highland games attracting crowds of up to 40,000 people.
And there is also the fact that the newly-inaugurated U.S. president is a proud Caledonian, Khakhar notes. “Donald Trump always manages to find an opportunity to talk about his mom coming from Scotland and how he owns a golf course there,” he adds.
Khakhar argues that all of these factors mean that, with the right promotion, the U.S. market could be ripe for Scottish-made haggis to make an impact.
“This presents a really good opportunity,” he says, “to educate the consumers that, ‘Look, this is something novel, coming from a place where probably your ancestors came from.’
“It could be marketed as, ‘This is a product that you want and need on Tartan Day,’ for instance.
“And we can see that the market is diversifying, so there is the opportunity for exporters in that respect. In Canada, you have seen vegetarian haggis being sold — and you also have vegan and gluten-free types of haggis. In terms of marketing, there are endless opportunities.”