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Mutton Haggis

A boiled mutton mixture of heart, tongue, liver, bacon, bread crumbs, lemon rind, salt, pepper, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Chop the uncooked heart, tongue, and half of the liver of a sheep, then mix with them half their weight in chopped bacon.

  2. Add stale bread-crumbs, grated lemon rind, salt, black pepper, and beaten eggs.

  3. Pack the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover and place it in a kettle partly filled with boiling water.

  2. Boil slowly for two hours.

  3. When done, turn it onto a dish and serve plain or with Sauce Bechamel.

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 its shape when sliced after cooking.
Stale bread-crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling a softer, less dense texture.
Bacon
Adds fat, which keeps the lean offal moist and adds savoury flavour.
Sheep heart, tongue and liver
Form the main meaty body of the haggis.

The step that matters

Boiling slowly in the kettle. Keep the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling can make the mold's contents break up and turn the egg-bound mixture tough and rubbery.

“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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