Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Haggis

A Scottish dish of a sheep's bag stuffed with minced pluck, suet, onions, toasted oatmeal, herbs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scotch Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bag

  1. Clean the sheep's bag in cold water and soak it overnight with cold water and a little salt.

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash the pluck and boil it in a pot of water with 1 tablespoon of salt for 2 hours, leaving the windpipe hanging out.

  2. Once cooled, cut off the windpipe, grate the liver, and mince the heart and lights very small.

  3. Mince ½ pound of suet and 4 small onions.

  4. In a bowl, combine the minced ingredients with ½ pound of toasted oatmeal, ½ teaspoon of black pepper, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ½ teaspoon of powdered herbs.

  5. Add 1 cup of the water used to boil the pluck and mix well.

Fill and boil

  1. Fill the sheep's bag slightly more than half full with the mixture and sew it up.

  2. Place the bag in a pot of boiling water and prick it occasionally to prevent bursting.

  3. Boil for about 8 hours.

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

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

  2. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 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 liquid and fat and gives the haggis its crumbly, firm texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Sheep's pluck
Provides the main meaty flavour and body of the filling.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Leave room in the bag and prick it while boiling. The oatmeal and fat swell as they cook and steam forms inside. Filling the bag only slightly more than half full leaves room for expansion, and pricking releases steam so the bag does not burst.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes