"Civilized Haggis"

[Scout]

Ya know, it's interesting. Many of those things we call National or ethnic dishes are in fact "poor people food." ...

… Some of the dishes that we used to prepare for the restaurant and people paid high proces for, were originally peasant food … Its a funny old world.

Exactly! There are examples from 18th Century New England of contracts with indentured servants that specified they could not be fed lobster more than X number of times per week, lobster being considered a garbage "by-catch" rather than proper food. Likewise the more recent popularity of dishes like blackened redfish, the "blackening" essentially just being a means to spice up a cheap piece of fish to make it more palatable.

Sorry to get off topic but an interesting side topic nonetheless.

[creagdhubh]

Ya know, it's interesting. Many of those things we call National or ethnic dishes are in fact "poor people food." Bouillabaisse, if you have it on the docks of Marseilles, is fish stew made from whatever the fisherman did not sell out of his catch that day. Soul food in the US is what ever was really cheap or free along the edges of the field after harvesting the good stuff.
Haggis made from the offal cuts is much the same way. Lots of cheap oats to fill you up and enough of anything else you could find to make it go down better.
We seem to hold Bouillabaisse, Soul Food, Haggis etc in some sort of reverence that I think would shock the tenant farmers who figured out how to make something to eat with what would probably not be welcome on the table up at the big house.

Precisely. I love me some scrag-end, mince and tatties, cock-a-leekie soup, hairst bree, Finnan haddie, Arbroath smokies, Forfar bridies, crappit heid, cullen skink, etc! YUM!!!