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Pan Haggis

Pan Haggs is a Scottish oatcake made with suet, oatmeal, milk, currants, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Pan Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Chop the suet and melt it in a saucepan.

  2. Add the oatmeal and well-cleaned currants, stirring for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the milk, pepper, and salt.

  4. Cover and let it simmer very slowly for 10 minutes until it absorbs all the milk.

Shape and serve

  1. Press the mixture into a small bowl.

  2. Turn it out onto a dish.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Currant + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts to add richness and fat, giving the mixture a moist, rich texture.
Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the mixture and absorbs the milk to set it into a firm mass.
Milk
Is absorbed by the oatmeal during simmering, softening it and binding the mixture.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and chew to the mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer very slowly until the milk is absorbed. Simmering gently lets the oatmeal take up the liquid evenly without scorching on the pan base. Too much heat can burn the mixture before it has softened and bound together.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

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