If haggis is English, where is cricket from? The offal truth about national icons

Blackleaf

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We all think of lasagne as being Italian, cricket as being English and tulips as being Dutch.

But last week, the Scots found out that their national dish of haggis was actually invented by the English.

But haggis isn't the only one whose origins are not from where you might think.

Lasagne was also invented by the English, cricket may have been invented by the Belgians and tulips originated in Turkey.

If haggis is English, where is cricket from? The offal truth about national icons

By Beth Neil
4/08/2009
The Mirror



It’s up there with the kilt, Rob Roy and the Loch Ness monster as one of the great Caledonian icons.

But now it appears the haggis was invented not by the Scots but by… the English.

Food historian Catherine Brown found references to the sheep’s innards-based dish in a 1615 recipe book, The English Hus-wife by Gervase Markham.

If it’s any consolation to our Scots readers, haggis is by no means the first national symbol to have its origins called into question.


LASAGNE - ENGLISH
A medieval cookbook in the British Museum has a recipe for a dish of baked pasta and cheese called “loseyns”, prepared for Richard II in 1390.


The world's first lasagne may have been prepared for England's King Richard II in 1390

CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA - SCOTTISH
It’s the most popular dish at Indian restaurants in Britain, but you won’t see it on a menu in India. The creamy curry was created in Scotland to cater for those who found Indian dishes too spicy.

CRICKET - BELGIAN?
The most English of sports was probably invented in Belgium and introduced here by Belgian immigrants around the 14th century. Linguists say the word cricket has Flemish roots.


Cricket: That most genteel of English sports may have been invented in Belgium

TULIPS - TURKISH
Along with clogs and Edam cheese, the tulip is one of the symbols of the Netherlands. But it only arrived there in the 16th century from what is now Turkey.

GOLF - CHINESE
Prof Ling Hongling of Lanzhou University says the Chinese were playing a golf-like game using 10 clubs 1,000 years ago. Which would put paid to Scotland’s claim to have invented the game.

STATUE OF LIBERTY - FRENCH
Made in France by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and presented to the USA in 1886 for the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. There is a smaller replica on the bank of the Seine in Paris.

CORNISH PASTY - FROM DEVON?
Don’t mention it in Cornwall, but it turns out the first pasty may well have been baked in neighbouring Devon.
Historians found references to a pasty in records from Plymouth dated 1510.
The oldest pasty recipe found in Cornwall dates from 1746.


The people of Cornwall won't like to hear that neighbouring Devon probably invented the Cornish pasty

FISH AND CHIPS - SPANISH AND BELGIAN
English travellers were introduced to battered fried fish in Spain in the 17th century. And chips were invented in Belgium around 1680. But the English probably invented the chip shop – Dickens refers to one in Oliver Twist.

PIZZA - GREEK
In ancient Greece, bakers topped thin disks of bread with oils, spices, herbs and vegetables, to create a meal with an edible plate. The Italians were the first to add tomatoes, in the 18th century, and cheese, in the 19th, to create the pizza we know.

AUSSIE SLANG - ENGLISH
Most of the words we think of as Australian were imported Down Under from the London slums of the 19th century. Streuth!


What are their stars doing on our flag?: Australia was once a British penal colony, and Aussie slang originated from the slums of London

BADMINTON - GREEK
Badminton is named after a Gloucestershire manor, where it was first played in 1873. But the earliest form was played in ancient Greece, and the Japanese had a similar game in the 16th century.

SPANISH FLU - AMERICAN
The pandemic of 1918-19, which claimed 20 million lives, has been unfairly called Spanish Flu. The first cases were in the US and the rest of Europe but because Spain was a neutral country with no censorship of demoralising news, it was perceived to be suffering the most.

SPAGHETTI - CHINESE
In 2005 a 4,000-year-old dish of preserved noodles was unearthed near the Yellow River in China. It means the Chinese were making noodles from flour at least 2,000 years before the practice emerged in Italy.

CUCKOO CLOCK - GERMAN
The first cuckoo clock was created in the Black Forest area of southern Germany. The Swiss are more associated with it because many of the German workshops were destroyed in the First and Second World Wars, and Swiss clockmakers took over the tradition.

mirror.co.uk
 
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DurkaDurka

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England must be really desperate for accolades if it is pushing to be recognized as the creators of Haggis. It's bad enough your country gave the world Prince Charles and the Spice Girls, leave the Haggis alone.
 

SirJosephPorter

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England must be really desperate for accolades if it is pushing to be recognized as the creators of Haggis. It's bad enough your country gave the world Prince Charles and the Spice Girls, leave the Haggis alone.

I don’t’ think it is much of an accolade to be considered a creator of haggis. I have eaten haggis several times when we lived in Scotland for two years (in Glasgow, you can get haggis and chips in McDonald’s).

It is OK, but nothing special. How can it be anything great, it used to be the staple food of poor Scottish peasants. They could only afford to buy the cheaper parts of the sheep (intestines, stomach lining etc.).

Personally I would prefer a steak (or even a hamburger for that matter) to haggis. I have attachment to Scotland, having lived in Glasgow for two years. So we celebrate Robbie Burns’s night by having haggis and turnips for dinner, but that is about it.
 

tay

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Well today is Robbie Burns Day, and all over the world tonight the Tartan Army is marking the bard's birthday, piping in the haggis, and no doubt drinking heavily.

And this is a momentous year in the history of Scotland. The year when a referendum will be held in September, to decide whether the country should become an independent nation.
 

Blackleaf

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Anyone that loves Scotch whiskey (a Scottish invention I might add)


Well, I don't care. I don't celebrate Burns Night. I'm not Scottish.


As for Robert Burns, he is hugely overrated. He was a poor poet who wrote nonsense verse in gobbledygook; his poems lacked richness of language and an intellectual range; he was an unfaithful husband who abandoned his child; his poems appeal to the worst of Scottishness, the Scots' unhealthy combination of self-congratulation and self-pity; Edwin Muir once called Burns, and his fellow Scot Sir Walter Scott, "sham bards of a sham nation".

England must be really desperate for accolades if it is pushing to be recognized as the creators of Haggis. It's bad enough your country gave the world Prince Charles and the Spice Girls, leave the Haggis alone.



The first known written recipe for a dish of the name (as 'hagese'), made with offal and herbs, is in the verse cookbook Liber Cur Cocorum dating from around 1430 in Lancashire, north west England:

For hagese'.
Þe hert of schepe,
þe nere þou take,
Þo bowel noght þou shalle forsake,
On þe turbilen made,
and boyled wele,
Hacke alle togeder with gode persole,



The English also invented that other "Scottish" icon - the Scottish kilt.

Other things the English gave to the world, which could be added to that list, are baseball, baseball cards and the Welsh national costume..