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Haggis, Scotch

A traditional Scottish dish made by stuffing a cleaned sheep stomach with minced liver, suet, onions, oatmeal, and spices, then boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Haggis, Scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stomach

  1. Wash the sheep's stomach well and soak it in cold salt water for several hours.

  2. Turn the stomach inside out, scald it in boiling water, scrape it with a knife, and keep it in water until needed.

Cook the pluck

  1. Thoroughly clean the sheep's pluck, pierce the heart and liver to let the blood run out, and boil the liver and lights for 1.5 hours.

  2. After 15 minutes, transfer them to fresh water and boil the rest of the pluck with them for the last 30 minutes.

  3. Trim away skins and discolored parts, grate half of the liver, and mince the rest finely.

Fill and boil

  1. Combine the minced liver, shredded suet, chopped onions, oatmeal (or crumbled oat-cakes), salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, and cayenne.

  2. Moisten the mixture with gravy and lemon juice, then fill the prepared stomach, leaving room for swelling, and sew it securely.

  3. Plunge the haggis into boiling water and gently boil for 3 hours, pricking it with a needle occasionally to release air.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's stomach
Acts as the casing that holds the filling together while it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and gives the filling its crumbly, bound texture.
Liver
Contributes savoury depth and a dense, rich body to the filling.
Gravy
Moistens the mixture so it binds and stays juicy inside the casing.

The step that matters

Leave room in the stomach and prick it while boiling. The filling expands and gives off steam as it cooks. Without room and pricking to release trapped air, the casing can swell and burst.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, 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.

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