scotland

Scotland

That would be Scotland.

Scotland claims that title today, but Wikipedia's history of haggis says the Romans were the first to create the dish and then possibly the Scandinavians. The haggis is frequently assumed to be Scottish in origin though there is little evidence for this, and food writer Alan Davidson states that the Ancient Romans were the first people known to have made products of the haggis type.[1] A kind of primitive haggis is referred to in Homer's Odyssey, in book 20, when Odysseus is compared to "a man before a great blazing fire turning swiftly this way and that a stomach full of fat and blood, very eager to have it roasted quickly." Haggis was "born of necessity, as a way to utilize the least expensive cuts of meat and the innards as well" (Andrew Zimmern). In fact, in times of famine people would eat whatever it was that they could get their hands on, which is how all those fascinating ingredients became a part of Scottish tradition. Clarissa Dickson Wright repudiates the assumption of a Scottish origin for haggis, claiming that it "came to Scotland in a longship [ie. from Scandinavia] even before Scotland was a single nation." [2]. Dickson-Wright further cites etymologist Walter William Skeat as further suggestion of possible Scandinavian origins: Skeat claimed that the hag– part of the word is derived from the Old Norse hoggva or the Icelandic haggw, meaning 'to hew' or strike with a sharp weapon, relating to the chopped-up contents of the dish. One theory claims that the name "haggis" is derived from Norman French. Norman French was more guttural than normal French so that the "ch" of "hachis", i.e. "chopped", was pronounced as the "ch" in "loch", giving "haggis"[citation needed]. Dickson Wright suggests that haggis was invented as a way of cooking quick-spoiling offal near the site of a hunt, without the need to carry along an additional cooking vessel. The liver and kidneys could be grilled directly over a fire, but this treatment was unsuitable for the stomach, intestines, or lungs. Chopping up the lungs and stuffing the stomach with them and whatever fillers might have been on hand, then boiling the assembly — likely in a vessel made from the animal's hide — was one way to make sure these parts did not go to waste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis

Scotland.

Scotland... was roman... now its ours and they can't have it back... besides the only reason the romans had it was because they couln't do anything else with the bits left over and so they left them for us... they addopted the dish... then we stole it back! long live haggis, the only thing to do with a sheeps stomach!