How Americans acquired a taste for haggis, with help from the Scottish poet Robert Burns

When Anne Robinson and Andrew Hamilton founded their catalogue-order business, Scottish Gourmet, in 2005, they were focussed on importing luxury Scottish foodstuffs for American consumers: smoked salmon, grouse, pheasant. Hamilton, an Ayrshire-born chef, was active in promoting locavore food for the Scottish National Tourist Board; for a time, he’d been known as the man who brought the langoustine to New York. But no sooner had the company set up shop than demands for a humbler item began rushing in. “The next year, the cry got worse!” Robinson told me recently. “I said, ‘Andrew, there’s no good haggis in America; they want their haggis.’ ”