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Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made from sheep's pluck, suet, oatmeal, onions, herbs, salt, and pepper, boiled in a stomach bag.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Scotch Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pluck

  1. Wash the pluck and bag well.

  2. Steep them in cold water for several hours.

  3. Boil the pluck with the windpipe outside the saucepan for 2 hours to allow impurities to escape.

  4. Once cooled, cut off the windpipe.

Prepare the filling

  1. Parboil the onions.

  2. Chop the onions.

  3. Toast the oatmeal until light brown in a frying pan or oven.

  4. Mince the lungs and heart, discarding inferior parts.

  5. Chop half the liver finely.

  6. Mix all ingredients in a basin with the seasoning and about ½ pint of the boiling liquor.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill the bag with the mixture, leaving space to prevent bursting.

  2. Sew the bag up.

  3. Plunge the bag into boiling water.

  4. Reduce heat and boil slowly for 3 hours.

  5. Prick the bag occasionally to prevent bursting.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. 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 gives the filling its crumbly, bulky body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the savoury filling.
Sheep's pluck
Provides the meaty base of the filling, cooked and minced until tender.

The step that matters

Leaving space in the bag and pricking it. The filling swells as oatmeal absorbs liquid and gives off steam during cooking. Without room to expand and occasional pricking to release pressure, the casing can burst.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper. 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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