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Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from lamb's pluck, liver, heart, oatmeal, suet, and spices, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Scotch Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the offal

  1. Soak the pluck, liver, and heart in salt water for 1 hour.

  2. Once cold, mince the pluck, liver, and heart finely.

Mix and cook

  1. Add the minced suet, oatmeal, pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the liquid from boiling the pluck.

  3. Place the mixture into a cloth, tie it tightly, and boil for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter.

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. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Lamb + livertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Absorbs the cooking liquid and gives the haggis its crumbly, bound texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich during boiling.
Lamb's liver
Contributes depth of flavour and a soft, rich body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture. The oatmeal needs enough liquid to swell and bind with the minced offal and suet. Too little leaves it dry and crumbly, while too much makes it loose and likely to burst or boil out of the cloth.

“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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