Chocolate Haggis

Haggis, a traditional Scottish dish memorialized as the national dish of Scotland by the poem Address to a Haggis in 1787, has become the inspiration for a new chocolate truffle.

Let’s remember, haggis is made by stuffing a sheep’s stomach lining with a minced mixture of the animal’s organs, onion, suet, oatmeal and seasonings, then simmering it in water. Not what you would think would inspire a chocolate, but you’d be wrong. Nadia Ellingham, an artisan chocolate maker in Edinburgh and founder of the Thinking Chocolate firm, created the chocolates as a place-setting favor for guests attending a Burns Night Supper, a Scottish tradition to celebrate the poet Robert Burns. The guests loved them so much that she decided to sell them commercially. “We wanted to have a Scottish theme for the chocolates so we also produced Cranachan, raspberry and oat truffles, based on a traditional Scottish dessert,” she says.

The good news is that she does not use offal in the chocolates; the taste of haggis is created with spices such as black pepper, mace, nutmeg and salt. Within the U.K., a six-piece box is £10, while a 12-piece box is £18, including delivery. Contact Ellingham through her website thinkingchocolate.com for orders outside the U.K. —Denise Shoukas

Denise Shoukas is a regular foodspring.com contributor and is the author of foodspring’s food forager blog.