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Mutton Haggis

A savory pudding made from minced mutton organs, bacon, bread crumbs, lemon rind, anchovies, sherry, eggs, and seasonings, boiled in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Mutton Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the liver, heart, tongue, and bacon together.

  2. Grate in the bread crumbs and lemon rind.

  3. Add the chopped anchovies, sherry, and beaten eggs.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Mold and cook

  1. Press the mixture tightly into a well-buttered mold.

  2. Boil for 2 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Liver + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds together when cooked and sliced.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, keeping the filling moist and tender.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the cooked filling from drying out.
Sheep's liver
Provides the rich, savoury body of the meat filling.

The step that matters

Press the mixture tightly into the mold. Firm packing removes air pockets so the filling sets into a dense, sliceable loaf rather than crumbling or leaving gaps during boiling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, bread, sherry, egg, 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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