Haggis
The Scotch would never forgive us if their national dish should be left out of the list of good things. Few English cooks, however, would dare to attempt a haggis, even with the most elaborate receipt before then. Therefore if anybody wishes to taste of the mighty Caledonian pudding which Burns calls the "Great Chieftain of the Pudding race," he had better send to Edinburgh or Glasgow for it. The pudding is a great traveller, does not suffer from travelling, and heats up with a most lordly grace. The Londoner can always order it at St. James's Hall. Mr. Grieve, as a worthy Scot, proud of his native heath and his Scottish mutton-from the inward parts of which the haggis takes its rise will be only too pleased to make known the boast of his country to ignorant Southerners.
Still, for the benefit of the canny Scots who are scattered over the world, and who may be found eating sheep's head and every other morsel of the mutton on the South Seas, on the African sands, and on the Himalayan summits, I append a grand receipt for the Haggis furnished by Meg Dods. This receipt is historical, and is the result of a competition of Haggises held in Edinburgh. The Haggis herein described gained the first prize; the second being adjudged to one superintended by Christopher North, of Ebony fame.
The Edinburgh receipt. -"Clean a fat sheep's pluck thoroughly. Make incisions in the heart and liver, to allow the blood to flow out, and parboil the whole, letting the windpipe lie over the side of the pot to permit the phlegm and blood to disgorge from the lungs. The water may be changed after ten minutes' boiling for fresh water. The lights cannot be overboiled. A half-hour's boiling will be sufficient for the rest; but throw back the half of Hake the liver to boil till when cold it will grate easily. Take the heart, the half of the liver and part of the lights, trimming away all skins and black-looking parts, and mince them together finely. Mince also a pound of good beef suet. Grate the other half of the liver. Have four mild large onions peeled, scalded, and minced, to mix with the haggis-mince. Have also ready some finely ground oatmeal toasted slowly before the fire, till it is of a light-brown colour and perfectly nutty and dry. A large teacupful of meal will do for this quantity of meat. Spread the mince on a board and strew the meal lightly over it, with a high seasoning of black pepper, salt, and a little cayenne, first well mixed. Have a haggis-bag (that is, a sheep's paunch) perfectly clean, and see that there be no thin part in it, else your whole labour will be lost by its bursting. Some cooks use two bags or a cloth as an outer case. Put the meat in the bag with half a pint of good beef gravy or as much strong stock. Be careful not to fill the bag too full, but allow the meal and meat room to swell. Add the juice of a lemon or a little good vinegar. Press out the air and sew up the bag. Prick it with a long needle when it first swells in the pot, to prevent bursting. Let it boil slowly for three hours if large. "Observations. A haggis boiled for two hours may be kept for a week or two, and when cold gets so firm that haggises are often sent from Scotland to distant countries. They must in this case be made very dry, and covered with oatmeal; nor will a haggis keep so well if there is onion put to it. For some tastes the above receipt prescribes too much onion. Haggis meat, by those who cannot admire the natural shape, may be poured out of the bag and served in a deep dish. No dish heats up better. A ragout of cold haggis, heated up in a stewpan in which a little shred onion with pepper is first fried, is better than on the first day." HAKE is one of the cod family-a coarse cod. Very 5 Halibut few come to London, but they appear not unfrequently in Paris under the name of merluche or sea pike-which English visitors take to mean haddock. The French name for a haddock is not merluche, but aigrefin, sometimes spelt aiglefin.
The hake has a peculiarity which gives him a certain superiority over the haddock, and indeed over all fish-it is easy to get rid of his backbone. After the fish is opened and cleaned, as all fish of this kind are, take his backbone, from where it begins, between the finger and thumb.
Slide finger and thumb along the edges of the bone down the body as far as it has been opened. The bone can then be drawn out quite free from the flesh. You have therefore a fish which, as the fins can easily be removed, is all fish and no bone, and which can be manipulated in a soup, in a stew, in cutlets, in curry, with an ease delightful to those who are afraid of fish bones.
A full working receipt, quoted by Dallas from Meg Dods, with a stretch of unrelated text on hake tacked on by the scanner. A few of its terms and all of its storage advice need translation.
- The hinge: the bag must not burstEverything else can be adjusted; a split bag loses the lot. Fill the paunch or casing no more than two-thirds full so the oatmeal can swell, press the air out before sewing, and prick it with a needle as soon as it first balloons in the pot. Keep the water at a bare shiver, not a rolling boil.
- What a "pluck" isThe heart, liver and lungs (the "lights") of one sheep, still joined by the windpipe. The recipe assumes you have them fresh and whole from a butcher; ordering them separately loses the windpipe trick of hanging it over the pot rim to drain.
- Lungs are not legally sold as food in the United StatesUSDA regulations have prohibited lung in meat products for decades, which is why American haggis is made with extra heart, liver and lean mutton instead. Elsewhere in the world a pluck is a normal butcher's order, usually needing a day or two's notice.
- The bagA cleaned sheep's paunch is the traditional casing and can be ordered with the pluck. Beef bung or a large ox middle is the usual modern substitute, and the receipt's own suggestion of an outer cloth is sound insurance. Failing all of these, the mixture can be steamed in a covered pudding basin, which comes close to the "deep dish" service described in the observations.
- OatmealUse pinhead or medium Scots oatmeal, never rolled oats, which turn pasty. Toasting it dry in a wide pan or a 325F oven until it smells nutty and is pale brown is not optional; it is what keeps the texture loose and separate.
- MeasuresA "large teacupful" of oatmeal here is probably something like 4 to 6 oz by weight, which suits one pluck and a pound of suet. Half a pint of gravy is 10 fl oz in imperial measure, about 1 1/4 US cups. The suet should be hard beef kidney suet, coarsely chopped or grated rather than the boxed shredded kind if you can get it.
- Cooking timesThe pluck is parboiled with the water changed once after ten minutes, the lungs for as long as you like, the heart and liver for about half an hour, with half the liver left in longer so it grates cleanly when cold. The filled bag then needs three hours at a slow simmer for a large one; less for a smaller. A skewer through the centre should come out very hot.
- Ignore the keeping instructionsThe observations recommend holding a boiled haggis "a week or two" and shipping it abroad, which belongs to a world of cold larders, salt and heavy oatmeal drying. Cooked offal is high-risk food; refrigerate a finished haggis within a couple of hours, eat it within three days, or freeze it. The reheated-with-fried-onion ragout at the end is genuinely good, but only from properly chilled leftovers.
- YieldOne sheep's pluck with a pound of suet makes a haggis for eight to ten as a main course, more if it is one dish among several. Traditional accompaniments are mashed potato and swede, though the receipt itself says nothing about them.
The "Edinburgh receipt" comes from The Cook and Housewife's Manual (1826), published under the name Margaret "Meg" Dods, a character borrowed from Walter Scott's St Ronan's Well; the book was in fact written by Christian Isobel Johnstone, a professional Edinburgh writer and editor. The rival competitor named here, Christopher North, was the pen name of John Wilson of Blackwood's Magazine he trade nickname for the publisher William Blackwood — so the prize haggis contest may be presumed, from the book's date, to belong to the literary Edinburgh of the 1820s, when Scottish national cookery was being written down and celebrated in much the same spirit as Scottish ballads. Burns's "Address to a Haggis," quoted here, dates from 1786 and had already fixed the pudding as a patriotic emblem. Dallas, writing for London readers in the 1870s, plainly regards the thing as beyond an English kitchen and advises sending to Scotland for one or eating it at St James's Hall — a reminder that haggis was by then a commercial article, made by butchers and shipped in a dry, oatmeal-crusted keeping form to Scots abroad.