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Scotch Haggis

A traditional Scottish dish made by cooking a mixture of liver, heart, suet, oatmeal, onions, and spices inside a sheep's paunch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 paunch

  1. Soak the paunch in salt water for several hours.

  2. Turn the paunch inside out and wash thoroughly.

  3. Wash the pluck.

Cook the offal

  1. Cover the liver with cold water.

  2. Boil for about 1½ hours.

  3. After 1 hour, add the heart and lights.

  4. Chop half the liver into medium-sized pieces.

  5. Finely chop the remainder along with the heart and lights.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the chopped ingredients with oatmeal, suet, onions, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice, and stock.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill the paunch with the mixture.

  2. Sew it up, leaving space for the oatmeal to swell.

  3. Place the haggis in boiling water.

  4. Cook gently for about 3 hours.

  5. Prick it occasionally during the first hour to allow air to escape.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 swells, giving the filling a crumbly, moist body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Spanish onions
Add sweetness and aromatic moisture to the filling.
Stock or gravy
Moistens the filling and carries savoury flavour through the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty filling.

The step that matters

Leave room for the oatmeal to swell and prick the paunch. Oatmeal expands as it absorbs liquid and steam forms during cooking. Without room to swell, the casing can burst, and pricking releases trapped air so the paunch does not split.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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