Haggis (Scottish Gaelic: taigeis [ˈtʰakʲɪʃ]) is a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with chopped onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal's stomach[1] though now an artificial casing is often used instead.

According to the 2001 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique: "Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour".

[2] It is believed that food similar to haggis — perishable offal quickly cooked inside an animal's stomach, all conveniently available after a hunt — was eaten from ancient times.

Haggis is traditionally served with "neeps and tatties", boiled and mashed separately, and a dram (a glass of Scotch whisky), especially as the main course of a Burns supper.

It contains a section entitled "Skill in Oate meale":[11] "The use and vertues of these two severall kinds of Oate-meales in maintaining the Family, they are so many (according to the many customes of many Nations) that it is almost impossible to recken all"; and then proceeds to give a description of "oat-meale mixed with blood, and the Liver of either Sheepe, Calfe or Swine, maketh that pudding which is called the Haggas or Haggus, of whose goodnesse it is in vaine to boast, because there is hardly to be found a man that doth not affect them."

(Gervase Markham, The English Huswife) Food writer Alan Davidson suggests that the ancient Romans were the first known to have made products of the haggis type.

[12] She cites etymologist Walter William Skeat as further suggestion of possible Scandinavian origins: Skeat claimed that the hag– element of the word is derived from the Old Norse haggw or the Old Icelandic hoggva[13] (höggva meaning 'to chop' in modern Icelandic[14]), Modern Scots hag, meaning 'to hew' or strike with a sharp weapon, relating to the chopped-up contents of the dish.

[5] Chopping up the lungs and stuffing the stomach with them and whatever fillers might have been on hand, then boiling the assembly – probably in a vessel made from the animal's hide – was one way to make sure these parts were not wasted.

When the men left the Highlands to drive their cattle to market in Edinburgh, the women would prepare rations for them to eat during the long journey down through the glens.

Burns wrote the poem "Address to a Haggis", which starts "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!"

[citation needed] In 1971, it became illegal to import haggis into the US from the UK due to a ban on food containing sheep lung, which constitutes 10–15% of the traditional recipe.