Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mutton Haggis
Mutton Haggis
Take the half of a sheep's liver with its heart and tongue, and about one pound of fat bacon. Mince all well together, and grate in two ounces of bread-crumbs and the rind of a lemon. Add two anchovies chopped, and mix the whole of the ingredients with a wine-glassful of sherry, two beaten eggs, and season to taste with pepper and salt. Press the haggis tightly into a mould well buttered, and boil for two hours. Probable cost, 2s. 4d., exclusive of wine.
This is a forcemeat loaf steamed in a mould rather than a true haggis — there is no oatmeal and no stomach bag. It behaves like a coarse pâté, and the main work is sourcing the offal.
- Sourcing the pluckHalf a sheep's liver with heart and tongue is a special order from a butcher; lamb offal is more commonly available than mutton. Lamb's tongue needs simmering for about an hour and peeling before it can be minced, which the original assumes you know.
- A wineglassfulIn Victorian English cookery books this is roughly 2 fl oz, or a quarter cup. Sherry here is doing seasoning work alongside the anchovy, not making the mixture wet.
- Fat baconUnsmoked fat back or streaky bacon is closest to what is meant. Modern cured bacon is saltier and often wet-cured, so hold back on the added salt until you have fried and tasted a teaspoon of the mixture.
- AnchoviesTwo whole salted anchovies of the period are stronger than two oil-packed fillets. Rinse salted fish before chopping; with tinned fillets you may want three or four.
- Boil means steamBoil, in practice a water bath -- the recipe says only to press the mixture into a buttered mould and boil it, with no mention of a covering. Best treated as a steaming: butter the mould, cover it tightly with buttered paper or foil, and stand it in a pan of simmering water reaching two-thirds up the side, so the mixture does not waterlog.
- Two hours, and the temperatureTwo hours suits a mould of the size these quantities fill. Liver forcemeat is done at 160F/71C in the centre; longer than that and the liver turns dry and granular.
- TextureMince the offal and bacon on a coarse plate, or pulse briefly in a processor. Reducing it to a smooth paste gives a rubbery loaf rather than the crumbly slice intended.
- Yield and servingThe quantities make a substantial loaf, serving six to eight. Cool in the mould, chill overnight, and serve sliced cold with mustard or pickled walnuts; it also reheats in slices in a little butter.
- The stated cost2s 4d is Victorian money. It is a costing note, not an instruction.
The recipe borrows the name of haggis while abandoning nearly everything that defines one. A traditional haggis binds sheep's pluck with oatmeal and suet and cooks it in the cleaned stomach; here the oatmeal is replaced by breadcrumbs, the bag by a buttered mould, and the whole is pushed toward the English potted-meat tradition with lemon rind, anchovy and sherry — flavourings that appear again and again in Victorian forcemeats and veal cakes. The result is closer to a coarse liver terrine than to anything Burns addressed, and it is a useful reminder that dish names travelled faster than their methods.