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Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish of oatmeal, suet, onions, and minced pluck stuffed into a sheep's stomach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Soak the sheep's stomach in salt overnight.

  2. Parboil the pluck, then mince it finely with the suet and onions.

  3. Mix the minced mixture with oatmeal, pepper, and salt.

Fill and boil

  1. Fill the stomach with the mixture and sew it up, making sure the bag is not too full to prevent bursting.

  2. Prick the bag all over with a skewer before boiling.

  3. Place the bag in boiling water, pricking it several times while boiling.

  4. Boil for three 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Absorbs fat and juices, giving the haggis its crumbly, moist body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich during boiling.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the savoury filling.
Sheep's stomach (bag) and the pluck
The stomach bag encloses the filling, and the pluck supplies the meaty base.

The step that matters

Leave room in the bag and prick it before boiling. Oatmeal and meat swell as they cook, so an overfilled bag can burst. Pricking the casing lets steam escape, reducing the risk of splitting.

“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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