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The Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from suet, onions, oatmeal, and minced liver, cooked in a sheep 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 stomach

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

  2. Trim skins and discoloured parts from the stomach.

Make the filling

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

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

  3. Moisten the mixture with gravy and lemon juice, then fill the prepared bag, leaving room for expansion.

Cook and serve

  1. Sew the bag securely and plunge it into boiling water.

  2. Boil gently for 3 hours, pricking the bag 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 + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the filling moist and tender as it cooks.
Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and swells, giving the filling its body and crumbly texture.
Onions
Adds savoury flavour and moisture to the filling.
Gravy
Moistens the filling so the oatmeal and suet soften evenly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty filling.

The step that matters

Leave room in the bag and prick it while boiling. The oatmeal and suet swell, and trapped air expands as the bag heats. Leaving space and pricking the casing lets steam and air escape so the bag does not burst.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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