Above: the pluck
Above: Pluck after boiling for an hour.
Above: Minced lung and heart, with grated liver.
Above: Prepared pluck with the other ingredient; suet, pinhead oats, spice (pepper, mace, allspice), herbs (marjoram, parsley, pennyroyal, thyme, winter savory) and salt.
Above: Soaked Ox bung (caecum) stuffed with haggis mixture. Note only 1/2 full.
Above: Bung just after putting into a fish kettle.
Above: Haggis after 1.5 hours of simmering.
Above: Haggis, 'neeps and tatties.
My husband has been threatening to make hagis at home since Burns's Night! :)
Posted by: Maninas | February 12, 2009 at 08:31 AM
Oh my gosh...I havent seen this kind of recipes in ages. Sounds very interesting. Like the step by step instructions. Great work!
Posted by: Malar Gandhi | February 13, 2009 at 10:32 AM
this is amazing adam. it looks fabulous. i hope you'll make it for me when i finally get to visit australia.
Posted by: anissa helou | February 19, 2009 at 01:15 PM
In italy we cook something similar food. we call it "turcinieddhi" :-) it is very good like your Haggis. My food blog is
blog.libero.it/pensieriincucina
Posted by: Lucio | April 24, 2009 at 02:38 PM
Fascinating. We've been studying sausage-making at school I'm a culinary school student) and it was a lot of fun.
This is a similar process, isn't it?
I'd love to try Haggis, but it looks like I'll have to make my own. American butchers (and there are precious few of them!) certainly don't carry it.
Cheers!
Posted by: CookingSchoolConfidential.com | August 05, 2009 at 06:47 AM
You can make it up in large sausage casings (in Scotland these are sold at fish and chip shops), if you are in America you will not be able to get lungs though. Not that this really matters in terms of flavour or texture.
Posted by: Adam Balic | August 05, 2009 at 01:22 PM
We just enjoyed haggis made by a 3rd generation butcher shop in West Vancouver, BC. Thanks for the pictures. Ours looked like the Ox bung, not sheep's stomach (we can get sheep parts in BC if you go to a local abbatoir, since we raise sheep here). But the filling was more pudding than granular, like yours was, and with sharp, delightful seasonings. How do you get the grain texture? More oatmeal? Do you toast yours?
Posted by: Ed Lyons | January 26, 2010 at 08:36 PM
I found your site while searching for the Thai Sticky rice steamer. But I am interested in the origins of heritage food from South East Asia. In particular I am researching into the origins of a cake locally known as sugee cake. Sugee is semolina in Hindee. I have tracked its origins to Love cake from Sri Lanka. According to Sri Lankan sources it has Portuguese origins but I cannot find any Portuguese cake that resembles sugee cake. I have found similar cakes from Greek and Lebanon. After reading your blogs the origins may be moorish.
Any suggestions?
Teong
Posted by: Teong ONG | May 02, 2011 at 07:12 PM
Hi Teong,
what an interesting question. Looking at the various recipes online for Sugee cake, I would say that the method used in these recipes looks very European. Central to to the recipe is the creaming of the butter, sugar and then adding the eggs. This is not really a method that you find in medieval recipes, so very unlikely to Moorish.
The Sri Lankan Love Cake (my source is from 1929)looks a bit like a version of hawla sooji that has been modified to suit European tastes. This is a very widespread recipe that is found from India to Greece. It can be very syrupy to cakey in texture.
In terms of Sugee Cake, its distribution in SE-Asia looks a lot like the Portuguese were involved, as similar looking recipes are found from Goa to Macau. In Goa there is a very similar cake called "Batega", which is made from semolina and coconut.
Another clue is that in an English cookery book I have that was published in Calcutta in 1900, a recipe the same as Sugee Cake is given under the name of "Portuguese Almond Cake".
I haven't seen any modern Portuguese recipes for a similar cake, but as the recipe is over 110 years old it is possible that it isn't made any more. This is very common. Or it could be a recipe that was developed in the colonies and did not make it back to Portugal. So if the recipe wasn't developed by the Portuguese in SE-Asia, it was likely to have been disseminated by them and later others like the British.
Posted by: Adam Balic | May 03, 2011 at 03:16 AM
Many thanks for your useful comments.
One of the characteristics of sugee cake is the use of more egg yolks than whites.
Is your 1929 Sri Lankan source, Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book by Hilda Deutrom?
I have been looking for references to sugee cake in Macau but I have not seen any. If you have any reference could you please let me know? I shall have to find out more about Batega from Goa. It is logical to find coconut in Batega as the locals tend to replace unavailable original ingredients with locals one. The Sri Lankans used more easily available cashew nuts while my grandmother’s recipe from Penang uses almonds. I would like to follow up your lead on the Sugee Cake (Portuguese Almond Cake) mentioned in your English cookery book published in Calcutta in 1900. I would like to have a detailed look at the recipe. Could you please let me have the full title, author and publisher? I wonder whether I would be able to find the book in the British Library.
FYI, Landmarks Book, Singapore has just published my book, Penang Heritage Food (by ONG Jin Teong). It is about cooking traditional Penang food and heritage about food. That is why I am interested in the origins of sugee cake among other heritage food. I am researching for a second book.
Posted by: Teong ONG | May 03, 2011 at 07:21 AM