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Haggis, Scotch
Take the stomach of a sheep, wash it well, and let it soak for several hours in cold salt and water, then turn it inside out, put it into boiling water to scald, scrape it quickly with a knife, and let it remain in water until wanted. Clean a sheep's pluck thoroughly. Pierce the heart and the liver in several places to let the blood run out, and boil the liver and lights for an hour and a half. When they have boiled a quarter of an hour, put them into fresh water, and, during the last half hour, let the rest of the pluck be boiled with them. Trim away the skins, and any discoloured parts there may be, grate half of the liver, and mince all the rest very finely; add a pound of finely-shredded suet, two chopped onions, half a pint of oatmeal, or, if preferred, half a pound of oat-cakes, toasted and crumbled, two tea-spoonfuls of salt, and one of pepper, half a nutmeg, grated, and a grain of cayenne. Moisten with half a pint of good gravy and the juice of a small lemon, and put the mixture into the bag already prepared for it. Be careful to leave room for swelling, sew it securely, and plunge it into boiling water. It will require three hours' gentle boiling. Prick it with a needle every now and then, especially during the first half hour, to let the air out. A haggis should be sent to table as hot as possible, and neither sauce nor gravy should be served with it. The above is sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A full traditional haggis, built from a whole sheep's pluck and boiled in the cleaned stomach. Most of the work is in the sourcing; the cooking is straightforward if the bag is kept below a rolling boil.
- Pluck and lightsA "pluck" is the heart, liver, lungs and windpipe taken together; "lights" are the lungs. Lungs may not be sold for food in the United States, so an American cook cannot reproduce this exactly and will need to substitute more heart and liver, which changes the texture considerably.
- The bagA sheep's stomach must be ordered from a butcher well in advance. Beef bung, a large synthetic casing, or a pudding basin tied in a floured cloth all work; the mixture behaves the same, only the presentation changes.
- Leave room for swellingThis is the hinge. The oatmeal absorbs the gravy and the fat renders, and a tightly packed bag will split. Fill it about two-thirds and sew it firmly; the pricking with a needle in the first half hour vents steam and is not optional.
- Gentle boilingThree hours at a bare simmer, with the bag just covered. A hard boil batters the casing and bursts it. Top up with boiling water as it reduces so the haggis never sits exposed.
- Half a pint of oatmealAn imperial half-pint is about 1 1/4 US cups. Use pinhead (steel-cut) oatmeal, toasted dry in a pan first; rolled oats turn pasty and modern instant oats dissolve entirely.
- Half a pint of gravyAgain about 1 1/4 US cups. The traditional liquid is the strained water the pluck was boiled in, which carries plenty of flavour and gelatine.
- A grain of cayenne"A grain" here means the smallest pinch, not the apothecaries' weight. The seasoning as given is assertive by design; haggis is served without sauce and has to carry itself.
- Serving and yieldEight to ten portions, as stated. Send it whole and cut it open at the table; the now-familiar accompaniment of mashed swede and potato is not mentioned here, and the recipe's insistence on no sauce still holds.
Haggis belongs to an old and once widespread family of dishes in which the offal of a freshly killed animal, which spoils fastest, is chopped with grain and fat and cooked in the animal's own stomach; versions appear in English as well as Scottish cookery long before the dish became a national emblem. Its identification with Scotland owes an enormous amount to Robert Burns, whose "Address to a Haggis" was first published in 1786 and whose birthday suppers made the piped-in haggis a fixed ceremony. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century the dish was firmly labelled "Scotch" in English kitchens. The recipe's frugality is genuine rather than picturesque: oatmeal and suet stretch a pluck that would otherwise feed two or three into a dinner for ten.