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The Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from sheep's heart, liver, lungs, suet, onions, oatmeal, and spices, cooked in a sheep's stomach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

The Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pluck

  1. Boil the pluck in water for 30 minutes, then transfer to fresh water and boil for another 30 minutes.

  2. Trim away skins and discolored parts from the pluck, then grate half of the liver and mince the rest finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the minced liver, suet, onions, oatmeal (or crumbled oat-cakes), salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne.

  2. Moisten the mixture with gravy and lemon juice.

Stuff and boil

  1. Fill the prepared sheep's stomach, leaving room for swelling, then sew the stomach securely.

  2. Plunge it into boiling water, boil gently for 3 hours, and prick it with a needle occasionally to release air.

  3. Serve hot without sauce or gravy.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that melts during cooking, keeping the filling moist and rich.
Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and gives the filling its crumbly, bound texture.
Onions
Add moisture and savory sweetness as they soften into the filling.
Liver
Contributes a deep, rich flavour and firm body to the filling.

The step that matters

Leave room for swelling and prick the stomach. The oatmeal and fat expand as they heat, and trapped steam can rupture the casing. Leaving space and pricking release air and pressure during the long gentle boil.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, lemon, liver. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More haggis recipes

Scotch 53Scottish 5Dundee 3Sheep's 3 See all 31 →

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