The Offal Truth

The truth is that possibly every country in the world has a recipe for mixing up animal offal into edible nutrition. The Scottish version has just managed to promote itself, with considerable help from Robert Burns, into the most famous of these.

Haggis up there with the kilt, Rob Roy and the Loch Ness monster as one of the great Caledonian icons.

But now it appears the haggis was invented not by the Scots but by… the English. Food historian Catherine Brown found references to the sheep's innards-based dish in a 1615 recipe book, The English Hus-wife by Gervase Markham.

If it's any consolation the Daily Mirror told their Scots readers, haggis is by no means the first national symbol to have its origins called into question.

LASAGNE: A medieval cookbook in the British Museum has a recipe for a dish of baked pasta and cheese called “loseyns”, prepared for Richard II in 1390.

CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA: It's the most popular dish at Indian restaurants in Britain, but you won't see it on a menu in India. The creamy curry was created in Glasgow to cater for those who found Indian dishes too spicy.

STATUE OF LIBERTY: Made in France by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and presented to the USA in 1886 for the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. There is a smaller replica on the bank of the Seine in Paris.

CORNISH PASTY: Don't mention it in Cornwall, but it turns out the first pasty may well have been baked in neighbouring Devon. Historians found references to a pasty in records from Plymouth dated 1510. The oldest pasty recipe found in Cornwall dates from 1746.

CRICKET: The most English of sports was probably invented in Belgium and introduced here by Belgian immigrants around the 14th century. Linguists say the word cricket has Flemish roots.

TULIPS: Along with clogs and Edam cheese, the tulip is one of the symbols of the Netherlands. But it only arrived there in the 16th century from what is now Turkey.

GOLF: Prof Ling Hongling of Lanzhou University says the Chinese were playing a golf-like game using 10 clubs 1,000 years ago. Which would put paid to Scotland's claim to have invented the game.

FISH AND CHIPS: English travellers were introduced to battered fried fish in Spain in the 17th century. And chips were invented in Belgium around 1680. But the English probably invented the chip shop – Dickens refers to one in Oliver Twist.

PIZZA: In ancient Greece, bakers topped thin disks of bread with oils, spices, herbs and vegetables, to create a meal with an edible plate. The Italians were the first to add tomatoes, in the 18th century, and cheese, in the 19th, to create the pizza we know.

SPAGHETTI: In 2005 a 4,000year-old dish of preserved noodles was unearthed near the Yellow River in China. It means the Chinese were making noodles from flour at least 2,000 years before the practice emerged in Italy.