A haggis recipe was published in an English book almost two hundred years before any evidence of the dish existed in Scotland, a historian has claimed. Not only are the Dutch and Japanese claiming that they invented Golf instead of the Scots, but now it is being shown that the culinarily challenged English created Haggis!

Historian Catherine Brown said she found references to the dish inside a 1615 book called ‘The English Hus-Wife’. The title would pre-date Robert Burns’ poem ‘To A Haggis’ (which brought fame to the delicacy) by at least 171 years. Former world champion haggis maker Robert Patrick however insisted: “Nobody’s going to believe it.”

‘Popular in England’
Ms Brown said the book by Gervase Markham indicated haggis was first eaten in England and subsequently popularised by the Scots. The first mention she could find of Scottish haggis was in 1747. She said: “It was popular in England until the middle of the 18th Century. Whatever happened in that period, the English decided they didn’t like it and the Scots decided they did. “We had Robert Burns come along who saw in it a very practical dish using up the odds and ends and making something good out of them. “Obviously the English turned up their noses at it and ate their roast beef, and the Scots for 350 years have been making it their own.”

‘Scottish product’
Mr Patrick said the idea haggis originated in England was akin to claims by the Dutch and Chinese to have invented golf.
He added: “Anything that’s to do with Scotland, everybody wants to get a part of.”We’ve nurtured the thing for all these years, we’ve developed it, so I think very much it is a Scottish product.

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