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The Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from liver, suet, onions, oatmeal, spices, and gravy, boiled in a bag.

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 liver

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

  2. Trim skins and discolored parts from the liver.

  3. Grate half of the liver and mince the rest finely.

Mix and bag

  1. Combine liver, suet, onions, oatmeal (or oat-cakes), salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with gravy and lemon juice.

  3. Place the mixture into a prepared bag, leaving room for swelling, and sew it securely.

Cook and serve

  1. Plunge the bag into boiling water and gently boil for 3 hours, pricking it with a needle occasionally to release air.

  2. 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. Liver + oniontop 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

Liver
Provides the main body and rich, savoury flavour of the haggis.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and gives a tender texture when cooked.
Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and binds the mixture so it holds together when sliced.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour as they cook within the mixture.
Gravy
Moistens the mixture so the oatmeal and liver become evenly soft.

The step that matters

Leave room for swelling and prick the bag. The oatmeal and suet expand as they cook and create steam. Without room and occasional pricking to release air, the bag can burst or the haggis can become dense and uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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