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Haggis

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the offal

  1. Boil the liver, heart, and lights in plenty of water for about two hours.

  2. Drain and trim off all sinewy parts.

  3. Chop a third of the liver and rub it through a wire sieve into a basin.

  4. Chop the heart and the small bag coarsely, then mix with the minced liver and suet.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in the Scotch oatmeal and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the reserved cooking liquid, ensuring it is not too liquid.

  3. Let the mixture sit in the basin for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Stuff the mixture into the soaked sheep stomach and sew it up securely.

  2. Plunge the Haggis into a large saucepan of boiling water with a plate underneath to prevent sticking.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours, pricking the bag occasionally to prevent bursting.

  4. Serve immediately on a hot dish without garnish or sauce.

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. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Liver + muttontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep liver
Provides rich, savoury flavour and a soft, binding body to the filling.
Mutton suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and tender as it cooks.
Coarse scotch oatmeal
Absorbs cooking liquid and gives the filling its crumbly, firm texture.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with the reserved cooking liquid, ensuring it is not too liquid.. Oatmeal keeps absorbing liquid as it sits and cooks. Too much liquid makes the filling loose and soupy, so it can burst the casing or fail to hold its shape when sliced.

“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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