But I love it. I was in Scotland last week, eating the herbivore version of Scotland’s national dish as much as possible. It’s not that I’m afraid of the real haggis -- an agitative mix of sheep liver, heart, lungs and other internal organs blended with meat, oats, barley and spices and cooked inside a sheep stomach. It’s just that “fake haggis” tastes better and seemed far easier to find. It may be a sign of the health-food times in Scotland, great purveyor of heart-attack cuisine. But a furious Robert Burns is surely scoffing in his grave.

Slicing open a fat cylinder of lentils, mushrooms, carrots, oats, barley and spices (and in an artificial casing, no less) is not what Scotland’s favorite poet had in mind more than two centuries ago when he wrote Address to a Haggis, which Brett Martin called “the most passionate dialect poem ever composed by a man to a meat product.” Burns called it the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race” and swooned over its “warm-reekin’” steam. Yum!

Every winter, Burns enthusiasts gather for a supper in his honor. They bring in a large, hot haggis to the sound of bagpipes, recite the poem and slice the haggis open. In 1984, another poet, Tessa Ransford, challenged the MacSween family, Scotland’s premier haggis makers, to create a vegetarian version to accommodate non-meat eaters at the annual Robert Burns haggis suppers. MacSween’s vegetarian haggis now makes up about 25 percent of the family business. (I have two such haggises in my freezer right now and feel that all is right with the world.)

Nowadays, veggie haggis seems to be far hotter than the “chieftain o’ the puddin’ race.” Iglu, a fabulous slow-food eatery in New Town, makes it with parsley and garlic mash in a whiskey cream sauce. It’s a favorite topping for a lunch spot specializing in baked potatoes in Old Town. Recipes abound (though I’m not sure of their reliability), but, alas, the yummy MacSween’s version is a well-kept family secret.

Real haggis still has its devotees, though, and they’re suspicious of the meat-free knock-offs. During my two hours of ecstatic food sampling last Saturday at the Farmers Market, I struck up a conversation with a stocky, gray-haired organic farmer who was selling true-to-recipe haggis—and homemade, too. I bought one and then pushed my luck. “Do you have the vegetarian version?” I asked. He laughed and shook his head. “Doesn’t exist, dearie,” he said.

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Photo by Frances Graydon via Flickr (Creative Commons).