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Haggis, English
Take the heart, tongue, kidneys, and part of the liver of the sheep; and if this is not likely to be enough, add the meat from a sheep's head. Weigh these ingredients, and take half their weight in fat bacon. Mince all very finely, and add the crumb of a penny roll, grated, two pounded anchovies, a tea-spoonful of minced lemon-rind, and a little pepper and salt. Mix thoroughly, and moisten with two beaten eggs and a glass of wine. Take a well-buttered mould, put in the mixture, plunge it into boiling water, and boil for two hours. Turn the haggis out on a hot dish before serving. Sufficient, without the head for six or eight persons.
This is a boiled offal pudding set in a mould rather than a stomach bag, and it behaves like a coarse forcemeat. The proportions and the water bath need attention more than anything else.
- The hinge: seal the mouldA buttered mould plunged bare into boiling water will take on water and the mixture will separate. Cover it tightly with buttered paper or foil tied down, and keep the water no more than two-thirds up the sides at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil.
- Prepare the tongue firstSheep's tongue has a tough outer skin that will not soften in a mince. Simmer it until tender, peel it while warm, then chop. Trim the white core and membrane from the kidneys, or the pudding will taste of ammonia.
- Keep the liver in checkThe recipe says "part of the liver" for good reason. Liver in quantity turns the pudding bitter and pasty, so keep it a minor share of the total meat weight and let heart and tongue dominate.
- Half the weight in fat baconTaken literally this is a very rich pudding by modern taste. The recipe asks for fat bacon, so some cure is intended; unsmoked fat bacon or fat back gives the intended result, while heavily smoked streaky adds a smoke the original need not have had. Reducing the fat to a third of the meat weight still holds the pudding together.
- A penny rollA small soft white bread roll; sizes varied, but something on the order of 2 oz, which would give roughly a cup of fresh grated crumb. Use fresh crumb, not dried breadcrumbs, which will drink the egg and wine and dry the mixture out.
- A glass of wineIn Victorian kitchen usage a wineglass is about 2 fl oz, though "a glass" is loose. Sherry or Madeira suits the anchovy and lemon better than table wine.
- AnchoviesTwo pounded anchovies means two whole salted anchovies mashed to a paste, nearer four modern tinned fillets, or a teaspoon or so of anchovy paste. They read as savoury depth, not fish, and they also carry salt, so season lightly before tasting.
- Doneness and yieldTwo hours at a simmer will take a mould of this size well past 160F throughout; check the centre with a thermometer if the mould is deep. Serves six to eight as stated, and it slices better after ten minutes' rest, though it must go out hot.
Scottish haggis is oatmeal, suet and sheep's pluck boiled in the cleaned stomach; this "English haggis" keeps the offal and drops nearly everything else, replacing the oatmeal with bread crumb, the paunch with a buttered mould, and adding anchovy, lemon rind and wine in the manner of a Victorian forcemeat or veal pudding. Anglicised versions of regional dishes of this kind appear in the large household cookery compilations of the later nineteenth century. The word haggis is usually derived from a verb meaning to hack or chop, describing the mince rather than the bag it was cooked in, though the derivation is not settled.