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Haggis

A savory mixture of oatmeal, suet, and minced heart and liver, stuffed into a cleaned sheep stomach and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the panada

  1. Combine mace, panada, bread, and water in a clean saucepan; boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Remove the bread, rub it finely in a basin, and mix with warm water as needed; sweeten to taste.

  3. Add a walnut‑sized piece of butter and a little grated nutmeg if desired.

Prepare the stomach

  1. Clean the sheep's stomach thoroughly, scald the inside, and soak it in lime water or strong salt water.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the heart and liver until they can be grated.

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated liver, chopped heart, oatmeal, suet, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and boil

  1. Stuff the mixture into the sheep's stomach, sew it up tightly, and prick it with a needle to prevent bursting.

  2. Boil in enough broth to cover for 2–3 hours.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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.
Liver
Contributes deep savoury flavour and a dense, rich texture to the filling.
Heart
Adds meaty substance and flavour to the filling.
Bread
Through the panada, binds the mixture and helps hold moisture in the filling.

The step that matters

Prick the stomach before boiling. Steam forms as the filling cooks and expands. Pricking the casing lets it escape, so the stomach is less likely to burst.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mace, bread, liver, pepper, onion, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, bread, liver, pepper, onion, butter. 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.

More haggis recipes

Scotch 53Scottish 5Dundee 3Sheep's 3 See all 31 →

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