Name: Receipt for a Haggis
Ingredients: lungs; heart; oatmeal; onion; coarse sea salt; black pepper; water; sheep's stomach

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Receipt for a Haggis

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Boil the lungs and heart until slightly cooked.
Chop the lungs and heart finely.
Mix in oatmeal, chopped onion, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.
Stuff the mixture into a cleaned sheep's stomach.
Sew the stomach closed and prick it to allow steam to escape.
Boil the haggis in water for about 2 hours.
Serve hot, traditionally with neeps and tatties.

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.

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