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Haggis

A savory mixture of oatmeal, suet, heart, liver, onions, and seasonings stuffed into a sheep's stomach and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stomach

  1. Wash the sheep's stomach thoroughly in several waters and scald the inside.

  2. Soak the stomach in lime water or strong salt water.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the heart and liver until they can be grated.

  2. Grate the liver and chop the heart finely.

  3. Mix the grated liver, chopped heart, oatmeal, and suet together, seasoning with pepper and salt.

Stuff and boil

  1. Stuff the mixture into the stomach, sewing it up carefully to exclude air.

  2. Boil the haggis in enough water to cover it for two to three hours, pricking the bag with a needle in several places.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + limetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 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

Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and fat and gives the filling its crumbly, binding body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Liver
Contributes a deep, savoury flavour and a soft texture when grated.
Heart
Adds meaty body and savoury flavour to the filling.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Stuffing the stomach without trapping air. Air left inside the stomach can expand during boiling and cause the bag to burst. Packing the filling firmly and sewing the bag closed carefully helps prevent this.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, lime. 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.

More haggis recipes

Scotch 53Scottish 5Dundee 3Sheep's 3 See all 31 →

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