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Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from oatmeal, onions, beef suet, and salt, boiled in a bag and sliced when cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Onion and beef 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 ↓

Scotch Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions and suet very finely.

  2. Wash the oatmeal and mix all ingredients together thoroughly.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a floured bag and boil for two hours.

  2. Slice when cold and fry in hot lard.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the filling and absorbs fat and moisture as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich during boiling and frying.
Silver onions
Add savoury flavour and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture in a floured bag. The bag must be sealed well and the mixture packed firmly so the oatmeal cooks through evenly without water leaking in or the pudding falling apart when sliced.

“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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