It has the consistency of minced-meat and oats. Like a crumbly meatloaf. It tastes good. It has varying amounts of cayenne pepper in it so it can be spicy, but not usually. When the outer covering (the sheep's stomach) is cut, it sort of splits and the contents emerge. You spoon it out to serve.
Battered neeps and mashed tatties -- traditional with Haggis -- is mashed turnips with cream and butter, mashed tatties are potatoes -- they're good too.
Note: The way food is seen changes through time. When my ancestors lived in Paisley, Stirling and Edinburgh, oysters and claret were food for the poor. Haggis is the great chieftain o' the pudding race as Robbie Burns put it. As he was a pauper, those who lionise him celebrate his birth by eating haggis and battered neeps — a poor man's feast — each January 25.
If you want to know more, my dad used to fry rolled oats with bacon , onions and pepper when I was a kid and that's often how we ate them. Okay if you're about to slay a mortal foe on the moors and you need something to keep your sporran warm, but for a grade three about to do battle with a spelling bee.... urgh.
BTW: Samuel Johnson in his first distionary defined oats thus:
A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited May 07, 2006).]
I think of eggnog at the Christmas holiday. I hate it, but my dad always made it and served it with a jigger of whiskey and a sprinkling of nutmeg on the top. I drank it because he took such delight in preparing it. He's been gone nearly 12 years and at the holidays I find myself with a nostalgic desire for eggnog, simply cause I'm thinking of my dad.
But even though my aunt CLAIMS my ancestors were from Scotland, no one in our family has ever mentioned a neep before, battered or otherwise.
My question for you, hoptoad, is what does YOUR minced meat taste like? My mom makes mince meat pies out of venison, and she adds raisins to them, so it's a sweet thing, a desert food only. Is your minced meat more of a dinner fare? What's the flavor?
BTW: Odd thing: in Australia (and England too I think) is that 'mincemeat' and 'mince-pies' are traditional at Christmas but it is always minced dried fruit (often previously soaked in brandy), powerfully sweet but nothing carnivorous about it.
PS: I have a recipe book passed down from my great/great/grandfather (1870s) and it has two recipes for haggis, one simple, the other more elaborate. Reading either will make you queasy. 
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited May 07, 2006).]
I've had haggis once, and it takes like mutton to me. Mutton being an adult sheep instead of lamb being a young lamb.
I didn't have any of the traditional meals like Hoptoad explained but mashed potatoes is a nice side dish to haggis if I may think so.
Hoptoad, you're a flaming haggis fanboi. 
It's not just the idea of haggis that puts people off, though that helps. If someone had served it to me without telling me what it is, I would have had the same reaction to it. Heck, half the people in Scotland don't actually like it, and they grew up with the stuff! It seems like just about every country has some food that half the population loves, and half hates. Japan has nato, Philipines has balut, and Scotland has haggis.
So, um, my description. I've had it twice, both times on Robbie Burns night. (You really should look up Ode to Haggis if you want to see how the fanboys regard it. Or just re-read hoptoad's post. Great chieftain of the pudding race indeed.) The consistency was, um, interesting - like meaty pudding with small chunks in it. It... oozes. The taste was nearly overwhelming, which I suppose is why some people adore it. Besides being spicy, it reminded me quite strongly of liver or kidney. I could only get seven bites down, and then every attempt after that, I ended up gagging.
If it had had the same consistency and tasted less strong, or if it had had a firmer consistency and tasted the same, I might have been able to finish it.
The neeps and tatties were alright, though. Scottish people eat it the same as they do any other meat dish: fork in the left hand, knife in the right (I still eat that way - much more efficient), combining the meat part with the mashed turnips and potatoes (often loosely mixed) on the back of the fork. I suppose it tends to dilute the haggis, but that didn't help me.
[This message has been edited by Kickle (edited May 08, 2006).]
but then, I have never had one that oozed the way trouser-recruit describes 
Don't even get me started on Irn Bru, tripe and onions or for something sassenach; black pudding (I, myself, am a proponent of the ancient art of ecky-thump 
)
or human kidneys and chianti... mmm
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited May 08, 2006).]
My son says haggis is spicy and chewy with some soft bits and some not so soft bits but okay if you don’t mind eating internal organs. His friend threw up, which the rest of the family thought very funny. I find both reactions are normal, depending on the individual.
Rob.
Spicy meat (particularly pork sausage) clearly tastes like something that should have been thrown away. I have no idea how anyone can fail to recognized that. Actually, I have a suspicion that people who like it know it tastes like garbage and get a perverse thrill out of eating something that their common sense tells them should be just as illicit as raiding the kitchen waste bin. It's because when they were little their parents were always yelling at them for pulling things out of the garbage. Adults are always throwing totally edible things away for silly reasons, kids understand this. Sausage is their revenge.