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Another Way to Make Haggis

A Scottish haggis made with beef steak, beef fat, onions, toasted oatmeal, and a mixture of reserved liquor, catsup, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pluck

  1. Thoroughly cleanse and parboil the pluck; save ½ pint of the liquor.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the pluck very small with the beef steak, beef fat, and onions.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the toasted oatmeal and mix well with the reserved liquor and catsup.

Boil

  1. Put the mixture into a bag.

  2. Prick the bag with a fork.

  3. Boil for 3.5 hours.

  4. If desired, boil the haggis in a jar tied over instead of in a bag.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main meaty body and chew of the filling.
Beef fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling from drying out during boiling.
Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and binds the minced filling into a firm, sliceable texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in the mixture.
Catsup
Adds acidity and sweet tang that balances the rich meat and fat.

The step that matters

Prick the bag with a fork. Boiling a sealed bag of meat and fat can cause pressure to build and burst it. Pricking vents steam so the bag stays intact during the long boil.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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