Celebrating Burns Night with haggis, neeps & tatties, and raspberry & drambuie trifle

If we noted all the holidays and celebratory food days and months we wouldn’t have time to write about anything else, but some occasions do truly merit attention. And Burns Night – honoring the Jan. 25 birthday of celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns – has to be one of them. After all, everyone in the English-speaking world shares a common knowledge of what “auld lang syne” means – and that’s thanks to Burns.

Besides, this gives us a chance to test the EYB library to see if we could refer you to recipes for foods we’d never be able to talk about otherwise. According to the BBC, a good Burns night menu includes (among other things) baked haggis (which must be piped in to great ceremony); neeps & tatties; succulent braised venison; skirlie mash; and baked raspberry and drambuie trifle. 

So could we find recipes for these online using our library. Yes, indeed, and here they are:

• Haggis
• Neeps & tatties (neeps are swedes, which are similar to turnips, and tatties are potatoes)
• Succulent braised venison
• Baked raspberry and drambuie trifle with drambuie (the recipe uses Scotch whiskey, but can be easily substituted). Also, this recipe uses toasted oats, often referred to in Burns dinners as “skirlie” – “skirlie mash” is toasted oats with mashed potatoes.

And so, as you pipe in your haggis, we leave you with these thoughtful words:

“And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak’ a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.”