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Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from sheep stomach, pluck, suet, oatmeal, onions, and spices, boiled in its own casing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Scotch Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stomach

  1. Wash the sheep's stomach well and soak it in cold salt water for several hours.

  2. Turn the stomach inside out.

  3. Scald it in boiling water and scrape it quickly.

  4. Keep it in the water until needed.

Prepare the pluck

  1. Clean the sheep's pluck thoroughly.

  2. Pierce the heart and liver to let the blood out.

  3. Boil the liver and lights for 1.5 hours.

  4. After 15 minutes, add the rest of the pluck to the boiling water.

  5. Trim away skins and discolored parts.

  6. Grate half of the liver.

  7. Mince the rest finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the minced liver, shredded suet, chopped onions, oatmeal, salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, and cayenne.

  2. Moisten the mixture with gravy and lemon juice.

Fill and boil

  1. Fill the prepared stomach bag, leaving room for swelling.

  2. Sew the bag securely.

  3. Plunge it into boiling water.

  4. Boil gently for 3 hours.

  5. Prick it with a needle occasionally to release air.

  6. Serve hot without sauce or gravy.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Onion + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's pluck
Provides the main meaty body and rich flavour of the filling.
Oatmeal
Absorbs moisture and gives the filling a crumbly, bound texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Leaving room for swelling and pricking the bag. The oatmeal and filling expand and release steam as they cook. Without room in the bag, it can burst, and pricking it lets trapped air escape.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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