Everyone knows that haggis is the most Scottish of dishes. Some people say that no other country would eat it. But now there's a suggestion that this gorgeous culinary creation might actually be... English!?!

Food historian Catherine Brown has reportedly found references to traditional haggis in an English cookbook "The English Hus-wife". This was published in 1615, 171 years before Burns wrote To A Haggis. The earliest reference to Scottish haggis that Brown has been able to find is from 1747. Brown says:

It was originally an English dish. In 1615, Gervase Markham says that it is very popular among all people in England. By the middle of the 18th century another English cookery writer, Hannah Glasse, has a recipe that she calls Scotch haggis, the haggis hat we know today.

Brown - herself a Scot - believes Scotland "hijacked" the haggis after the 1706 Treaty of Union. Apparently:

It seems to be that there's an identity thing here. We'd lost our monarchy, we'd lost our parliament and we gained haggis.

Needless to say, Brown's claims have provoked something of a backlash. Robert Patrick, a former champion haggis maker, says:

We've nurtured the thing for all these years, we've developed it, so I think very much it is a Scottish product

James Macsween, of the famous Macsween haggis company, says:

I didn't hear of Shakespeare writing a poem about it.

QED.