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To Make a Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from sheep's stomach stuffed with liver, heart, lungs, suet, oatmeal, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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

  1. Clean the sheep's stomach thoroughly and soak it in salt and water for 1-2 days.

  2. Blanch the liver, lights, and heart, then chop them finely (grate the liver).

  3. Chop the suet finely and dry the oatmeal in the oven.

Fill and boil

  1. Mix the chopped organs, suet, and oatmeal together, then season with pepper, salt, parsley, and onion.

  2. Sew up the stomach, adding a few spoonfuls of white stock before finishing.

  3. Place the haggis in a stewpan with a drainer, cover it with water, and boil it, pricking it all over to prevent bursting.

  4. Boil for several hours, ensuring it remains covered.

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 moisture and binds the filling, giving it a crumbly, firm texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich during long cooking.
Liver
Contributes savoury depth and body to the minced filling.
White stock
Adds moisture so the filling stays tender as it cooks.

The step that matters

Pricking the stomach before boiling. Steam forms inside the filling as it heats, and the casing can burst if it is not pricked to let the steam escape. Keeping it fully covered in water during the long boil also keeps the casing from drying and splitting.

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.

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