Skip to main content
Main

To Make a Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from sheep organs, suet, oatmeal, and seasonings, cooked in a sheep stomach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Make a Scotch Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stomach

  1. Thoroughly wash and clean the sheep's stomach, then turn it inside out.

  2. Soak the stomach in salt and water for 1-2 days.

Make the filling

  1. Blanch the liver, lungs, and heart, then finely chop the blanched organs and grate the liver.

  2. Mix the chopped organs with the finely chopped suet and dried oatmeal.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper, coarse sea salt, chopped parsley, and onion.

Fill and boil

  1. Sew up the stomach bag, adding a few spoonfuls of white stock before finishing the sewing.

  2. Place the haggis in a stewpan with a drainer and cover it with water.

  3. Boil the haggis, keeping it covered.

  4. Prick the haggis all over with a small pin to prevent bursting.

  5. Boil for several hours, being careful when removing it from the pot.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and gives the filling its crumbly, bound body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich during long cooking.
Sheep's heart
Provides dense, savoury meat that forms the bulk of the filling.
Sheep's liver
Adds deep, rich flavour and a soft texture when grated into the filling.
Sheep's lights (lungs)
Contributes a light, spongy texture to the minced filling.

The step that matters

Pricking the haggis before boiling. Steam forms inside the sealed stomach as it heats; without pricking it can build pressure and burst, so small holes let steam escape.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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