The offal truth?
The offal truth
The Mirror: 4/08/2009
HAGGIS WAS ENGLISH, CRICKET IS BELGIAN AND PIZZA IS, ER, GREEK
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
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.
CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA
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.
STATUE OF LIBERTY
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
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.
AUSSIE SLANG
Most of the words we think of as Australian were imported Down Under from the London slums of the 19th century. Strewth.
BADMINTON
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.
CRICKET
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.
TULIPS
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
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.
FISH AND CHIPS
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
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.
SPANISH FLU
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
In 2005 a 4,000year-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
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.