the oatmeal pudding of the full Irish breakfast: pinhead oatmeal, pork, and onion seasoned with white pepper and mace, bound and cased, then sliced and fried until crisp
Origin: Ireland
From the journey of Oat.
White pudding is the pale, oatmeal-rich cousin of black pudding, and where the black is bound with blood, the white is bound with oatmeal and fat alone, which makes it, at heart, an oat dish wearing the guise of a sausage. It is one of the clearest survivals of the old oaten diet of Ireland, where the oat, not the potato, was the true staple through the medieval and early modern centuries, and it holds a fixed place on the plate of the full Irish breakfast beside the black pudding, the rasher, and the fried egg. Closely related puddings are made across the whole oat belt of the British Isles: the mealie pudding and white pudding of Scotland, and the hog's pudding of the English West Country. At its core the pudding is pinhead oatmeal and finely chopped pork and pork fat, bound together, seasoned with white pepper, mace or nutmeg, and sometimes a little coriander, and traditionally packed into a casing and simmered, then cooled. The oatmeal is the body of it: soaked or lightly cooked, it swells and binds the mixture and gives the pudding its characteristic soft, crumbly, faintly nutty texture, quite different from an all-meat sausage. In the modern kitchen it is bought ready-made in a thick cylinder, sliced into rounds, and fried in a little fat until the outside is crisp and browned and the inside is hot and yielding. This home version is made as a free-form pudding, cooked in a loaf tin or shaped and simmered, which spares the cook the business of filling casings whilst keeping the flavour and texture true. The same pudding is made throughout Northern Ireland, where it is a standard component of the Ulster fry, and the oatmeal binding is what separates the Irish and Scottish forms from the English black pudding tradition next door.
Pinhead oatmeal is essential for the correct crumbly, nubbly texture; rolled oats turn pasty. If you keep sausage casings and a stuffer, the mixture can be filled into casings and poached in the traditional way. The seasoning is a matter of regional and family variation: some add leek in place of or alongside the onion, some a little dried sage or thyme. For a vegetarian pudding, omit the pork and fat, increase the oatmeal and onion, bind with extra egg and a little butter, and season the same way; it is closer then to a Scottish skirlie pudding but very good. White pudding freezes well, sliced, ready to fry from frozen.
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