redred
01-24-2013, 01:51 PM
http://i.imgur.com/axOIJkx.jpg
Traditional Scottish haggis is banned in the United States. With Burns Night looming, how do fans satisfy their taste for oatmeal and offal?
For aficionados, it is the "great chieftain o' the pudding-race".
To sceptics, however, it is a gruesome mush of sheep's innards - and for decades American authorities have agreed.
Authentic Scottish haggis has been banned in the United States since 1971, when the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) first took a dim view of one of its key ingredients - sheep's lung.
While millions of people around the world will enjoy, or endure, a Burns Night helping on 25 January, those in the US who want to celebrate Scotland's national bard in the traditional manner are compelled to improvise.
Some choose to stage offal-free Burns suppers, and for most people not raised in Scotland, the absence of the dish - comprising sheep's "pluck" (heart, liver and lungs) minced with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices, all soaked in stock and then boiled in either a sausage casing or a sheep's stomach - might be no great hardship.
But for many expat Scots and Scots-Americans, the notion of Burns Supper without haggis is as unthinkable as Thanksgiving without turkey.
According to custom, the haggis should be paraded into the room with a bagpiper before Burns' poem Address to a Haggis is recited and the dish is served as the main course.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21128089
Traditional Scottish haggis is banned in the United States. With Burns Night looming, how do fans satisfy their taste for oatmeal and offal?
For aficionados, it is the "great chieftain o' the pudding-race".
To sceptics, however, it is a gruesome mush of sheep's innards - and for decades American authorities have agreed.
Authentic Scottish haggis has been banned in the United States since 1971, when the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) first took a dim view of one of its key ingredients - sheep's lung.
While millions of people around the world will enjoy, or endure, a Burns Night helping on 25 January, those in the US who want to celebrate Scotland's national bard in the traditional manner are compelled to improvise.
Some choose to stage offal-free Burns suppers, and for most people not raised in Scotland, the absence of the dish - comprising sheep's "pluck" (heart, liver and lungs) minced with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices, all soaked in stock and then boiled in either a sausage casing or a sheep's stomach - might be no great hardship.
But for many expat Scots and Scots-Americans, the notion of Burns Supper without haggis is as unthinkable as Thanksgiving without turkey.
According to custom, the haggis should be paraded into the room with a bagpiper before Burns' poem Address to a Haggis is recited and the dish is served as the main course.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21128089