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The Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from sheep's pluck, oatmeal, onion, and spices, boiled in a stomach or casing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cumin and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,866 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The Scotch Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the pluck

  1. Clean the sheep's pluck thoroughly.

  2. Make incisions in the heart and liver to allow blood to flow out.

  3. Parboil the whole pluck, keeping the windpipe over the side of the pot to let phlegm and blood escape.

  4. Remove from water and chop the pluck finely.

Mix and stuff

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped pluck with onion, oatmeal, salt, pepper, and spices.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the cleaned sheep's stomach or a sausage casing.

  3. Sew it up and boil in water for about 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. Cumin + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + coriandertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + cumintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + cumintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,382 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and fat, giving the filling a crumbly, binding texture.
Sheep's pluck
Provides the main meaty body and rich flavour of the filling.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Stuffing and sewing the casing. The filling expands as oatmeal absorbs liquid during boiling, so the casing must be filled loosely and sealed well. Overfilling can cause the casing to split in the pot.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, cumin, coriander. 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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