Crafting a Haggis for American Tastes (and Import Restrictions)

When Scottish Americans and Scottish expats sit down on Saturday night to celebrate the birthday of the 18th-century poet Robert Burns, the traditional haggis will probably not be up to purist standards.

Haggis, the savory Scottish dish of boiled sheep innards, oatmeal and spices, can be a real haggis, many argue, only if it includes a key ingredient: sheep lung, which is used in the stuffing. In the United States, which bans imports of haggis with sheep lung, some Americans of Scottish heritage have turned to the black market to get their hands on the real thing.

Now Macsween, one of the more popular makers of haggis in Scotland, has developed a recipe that would meet U.S. import guidelines by replacing sheep lung with lamb heart. It’s not the first modification that Macsween, which was founded in Edinburgh in 1953, has made to its haggis. In a nod to modern tastes, it has swapped the sheep stomach that has traditionally been used as a haggis casing for a beef casing, like those used in some sausages.

“Do I think there’s something to be said for textural difference that the lung adds to it? Yes,” said Greg Brockman, a butcher in Brooklyn who has made his own version of haggis for years. “Do I think the average consumer is going to notice? Probably not.”

The new take on the delicacy is slated to arrive in the United States by this time next year, in time to be the centerpiece at Burns Night celebrations.

Burns helped turn haggis, which was traditionally consumed by peasants, into Scotland’s national dish with lines like “Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face / Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race!” in his poem “Address to a Haggis,” which is read as part of the celebrations.

While a mere mention of the delicacy can draw winces from Americans, James Macsween, the managing director of his family business, sees possibility far beyond Burns Night.

“A lot of people eat this on a week-by-week basis,” he said. “We have done all the hard work: We have ground it, blended it, mixed it, seasoned it and made it into a very nutritious and tasty meat protein ingredient.”

Take the casing off, Mr. Macsween said, and add the stuffing as a topping or ingredient in haggis pizza, haggis lasagna or haggis poutine.

“You can make hundreds of menu suggestions,” he said. “It’s the versatility.”

Macsween sells about eight million pounds of haggis every year in Britain, where the recipe includes sheep lung. Its biggest client is the grocery and department store chain Marks & Spencer. Mr. Macsween said the haggis market is worth about 14 million pounds, or about $17.5 million.

Breaking into the U.S. market has been a challenge. Haggis was banned in the United States in the 1970s because of the ban on lung sales. In 1989, the United States banned lamb and beef imports from Britain after an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, otherwise known as mad cow disease.

Mr. Macsween said he had been trying to enter the North American market since 2015, when he began representing the Scottish haggis and meat manufacturing industry in talks with the Canadian and U.S. governments to try to put Scottish lamb and beef back on menus across the Atlantic.

The United States relaxed its restrictions on lamb and beef imports in 2022, but because of the ban on lung sales, one thing was clear: If Macsween’s haggis were to be sold in America, it would have to substitute lamb heart.

American-made haggis is “perfectly acceptable,” Mr. Macsween said. But now, he says, it’s time to “finally get genuine Scottish haggis into the United States.”

Macsween will use the same recipe for American-sold haggis as it does in Canada, now one of its biggest markets. That includes lamb heart and fat, oatmeal, white and black pepper, aromatic herbs, salt, onion and broth.

“We know it works,” Mr. Macsween said. “It’s a tasty product, and it’s the most authentic haggis we can make within the legislation.”

Anne Robinson, the founder of Scottish Gourmet USA in Greensboro, N.C., isn’t so sure. Her company is one of the largest purveyors of domestically made haggis in America (made with ground lamb and beef liver, venison or vegetables), and she questioned whether Macsween would be able to get around the U.S. regulations. Still, she welcomed the company to what she described as “a highly specialized market.”

Mr. Brockman, the butcher in Brooklyn, lived in Scotland for four years and remembered having Macsween haggis for Burns Night celebrations with friends. Now he makes his own at Prospect Butcher Company, using uses sheep heart and liver. He usually sells about 20 pounds of it around Burns Night.

“Everyone fears it as this emblematic weird food,” he said. “But it has a wonderful mix of warm spices and there is some of that iron tang to it from the heart and liver. I don’t think it’s at all overpowering. It’s just a nice mound of food, man. It’s not appealing in shape or color, but it tastes really good and smells really good.”