Corrections: What the Research Overturned

Haggis at a Burns supper. Scotland’s national dish is first written down in England.

Offal attracts confident stories. Many of them are repeated from site to site with no source behind them, and some are simply wrong. This page gathers what the research for this section found, in three groups: claims that are false, claims that are true in a narrower form than usually told, and claims that could not be confirmed and are therefore not repeated as fact anywhere in this section.

False

The claim	What the record shows	Where
”Offal is banned in America.”	Only three kinds may not be sold as food: livestock lungs (since 1971), thyroid glands and laryngeal muscle, and the BSE specified risk materials of cattle. Everything else is legal.	Safety
Haggis is Scottish in origin.	The earliest written recipe, hagese, is English — the Lancashire Liber Cure Cocorum, about 1430.	History
Chitterlings were invented by enslaved cooks in the American South.	The word and the dish are English and medieval (cheterlingis, 13th century). Enslaved cooks made them into a great tradition; they did not originate them.	History, Tripe
Fuqi feipian, “husband and wife lung slices,” is made with lung.	It contains no lung: beef, tripe, tongue and heart.	Tripe
Philadelphia pepper pot was invented to feed Washington’s army at Valley Forge.	”Almost certainly untrue.” The soup came from the Caribbean and West Africa and was sold by Black street vendors.	Tripe
Cajun andouille is a chitterling sausage.	Cajun andouille is a smoked pork sausage; French andouille is the intestine one.	Tripe
Head cheese is a cheese.	It is a meat jelly, with no dairy in it.	Heads, feet and tails
Huang hou, “yellow throat,” is the throat or trachea.	It is the aorta.	Every part
Ponmo is cow udder.	Ponmo is cow skin.	Every part
Pinapaitan bile is “found in the liver.”	Bile is stored in the gallbladder.	Every part
”Maw” means stomach, so fish maw is a fish stomach.	Fish maw is the swim bladder.	Fish offal
Soft roes on toast is a Mrs Beeton recipe.	It is not in her 1861 book.	Fish offal
Cooking makes any fish roe safe.	Gar roe stays poisonous when cooked.	Fish offal
Supermarket taramasalata is naturally pink.	Natural tarama is beige; the pink is dye.	Fish offal

True, but narrower than usually told

• “Deer heart and liver are safe from CWD.” No agency says so. A 2006 study found the disease prion in the heart muscle of 7 of 16 infected deer, and the liver was not studied. The safe choice is testing, not choosing an organ. (Game offal)
• “A fluky deer liver is fine if you trim it.” For tapeworm cysts, yes. For the giant liver fluke — black tracks and fluid pockets — the Michigan DNR says the liver is “inedible.” (Game offal)
• “Pâté is a safe way to eat liver.” Chicken-liver pâté cooked pink is the offal dish most often behind outbreaks, because Campylobacter lives inside the liver. Cooked through to 165 °F, it is safe. (Safety)
• “Chitterlings are only a risk to the person who eats them.” The documented victims are infants in the house, infected through the cook’s hands. Boil them five minutes before cleaning. (Safety)
• “Liver is a superfood.” It is extraordinarily nutritious, and a single 100 g serving of beef liver carries about 2.6 times the adult upper limit for vitamin A. It is a weekly food, and one to avoid in pregnancy. (Liver)
• “Michigan fish are safe to eat.” The Eat Safe Fish guides test fillets only, and advise against eating the organs — “liver, fish eggs, etc.” (Fish offal)
• “Mollejas are sweetbreads.” In Argentina and Uruguay they are. In Colombia, and for poultry, they are gizzards. (Gizzards)
• “Sweetbread is the thymus.” It is the thymus or the pancreas, and beef and pork sweetbreads are always the pancreas. (Kidneys, sweetbreads and brains)
• “The Kurt Lewin experiment showed that X% of housewives served offal.” The experiment is real, and the discussion method did work better than lectures. But the percentages are quoted two different ways and the original report could not be read, so no figure is given. (History)
• “Sisig was invented in 1974.” The sizzling pig’s-head dish was, by Lucia Cunanan. The word is from 1732, and then meant a sour green-papaya salad. (Heads, feet and tails)
• “Snoot sandwiches are a St. Louis dish.” St. Louis and Kansas City are where they survive. They were sold in Atlanta in the 1920s and in Harlem and Memphis in the 1930s. (Heads, feet and tails)
• “Gyūtan began with tongues the American occupation threw away.” That is the popular story, but Sendai’s own gyutan association rejects it. (Heart and tongue)
• “Fish head curry is Indian.” It was created in Singapore, by a cook from Kerala; fish head is not served in traditional Malayalee cooking. The date (1949) is well supported; whether it began at a stall or a restaurant is not. (Fish offal)

Looked for, not confirmed

The research for this section went looking for each of these and could not find a source. None is stated as fact anywhere in the dive.

• Soaking kidneys in milk or salt water removes anything measurable.
• The legality of selling unwashed “green” tripe for human food in the US.
• The “high-risk deer tissues” list (brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, lymph nodes) as current CDC or Michigan DNR guidance.
• Sheep’s eyes offered to honoured guests at Arab or Bedouin feasts.
• Anthony Bourdain choosing bone marrow as his “last meal.”
• Fergus Henderson’s marrow being “the one dish that has never left the St. John menu.”
• A stand-alone dish of beef lips, of scrotum, of pancreas as such, or of larynx.
• Venice’s fegato alla veneziana descending from a Roman liver-and-figs dish.
• A Nobel banquet connection for Kalix löjrom.
• Any traditional bourbon-glazed gizzard recipe — so the one in this collection is labelled as original and untested.
• The Montana Testicle Festival’s dates.
• A measurement of contaminants in Michigan fish roe. The state’s advice against eating eggs is a precaution based on where the chemicals are stored, not a published per-lake figure.

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In this dive: What offal is · The history · Safety and the law · Liver · Heart and tongue · Kidneys, sweetbreads and brains · Tripe and intestines · Blood · Heads, feet and tails · Gizzards · Game offal · Fish offal · Every part on the list · Corrections