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Dundee Haggis

A Scottish haggis made with oatmeal, meat, broth, bread crumbs, butter, eggs, and milk, cooked in a double boiler and then boiled or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dundee Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Stir the skimmed and strained gravy into the soaked oatmeal.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cook in a double boiler for 1 hour.

Thicken and cool

  1. Add the milk in which the bread crumbs have been soaked.

  2. Cook for another 30 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Turn the mixture into a bowl to cool completely.

Mold and serve

  1. Beat in the melted butter, chopped meat, and beaten eggs; mix thoroughly.

  2. Pour into a buttered mold and boil or steam for 1.5 hours.

  3. Turn out and serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Forms the body of the haggis and thickens as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it firm when boiled or steamed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, moister texture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and add moisture and body to the mixture.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, keeping the mixture soft as it cooks.
Veal, mutton, or poultry
Provides the meaty flavour and chopped texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Cool completely before beating in the eggs. Adding beaten eggs to a very hot mixture can scramble them into lumps. Cooling first lets the eggs blend in smoothly, so they set evenly when the haggis is boiled or steamed.

“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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