My Dublin Coddle

My Dublin coddle is a personal take on a dish considered the city's signature dish by many natives of the capital of the Republic of Ireland. Like so much in Irish culture, its story is complex. Nonetheless, its core ingredients of carrots, potatoes, bacon and sausages are the stuff of comfort food in many cultures. Easy-to-cook, I have alway found it a crowd-pleaser, particularly among crowds of diminutives. Yes, kids like it.

Mollycoddled

The reason I am calling this “my” Dublin coddle is not self-aggrandisement but self-defence: I don’t want to be stoned by any Dubliners thinking I am trying to palm this off as “the real thing”.

Just under a decade ago, I went to Ireland to write an article on a cooking school of international renown, one of a second-generation of cooking schools particularly popular with wealthy Irish Americans and other well-heeled Irish Diasporan visitors built on the legacy of Myrtle Allen, the first Irish woman chef to earn a Michelin star.

Needless to say there was suspicion of “yer man from London”. While there, I clicked with one of the chefs who taught at the school, one of those cheeky women who attract me like magnets. Soon—inevitably over a lot of beer and whiskey—she decided I wasn’t “a pr**k”. Aside from her gig as a part-time tutor at the school, she worked as a chef in a restaurant in a stylish hotel in Dublin, one of the first that proudly profiled Modern Irish cooking on its chichi menu. Despite the initial caution, she soon understood that I truly rate traditional cooking without airs and graces. She invited me to her home in Dublin to experience a true coddle, arguably the signature dish of the city, something you’re likely to find on the menus of most pubs that serve food in Dublin… and historically viewed as a good restorative on those nights when much alcohol is consumed.

In her kitchen, her unique personality bossed around her husband, a consultant in gastrointestinal medicine—and also a Dublin native—who chopped the vegetables with the trepidation of being under the critical gaze of the professor leading his first-year of clinical ward rounds.

Not so much something I hadn't intuited—but had confirmed—is that coddle is not so much a singular prescriptive recipe so much as a style of Dublin stew (or casserole if you’re trying to be fancy) Or, what I know as a fricassée. And, yes—sorry Ireland—that is why I call it “my coddle”: I could not resist a few things I know from French/Belgian cooking techniques when making what I think really showcases its flavours.

Literary or literally

Supposedly a favourite of literary legends Seán O'Casey and Jonathan Swift—not to mention James Joyce—folklore also has it that coddle emerged as a result of the first Irish Famine in 1740. The dish was primarily about chucking anything edible into the pot that might be to hand.

This is fitting for what I am doing here. It’s been prompted by my non-waste agenda for food. Basically, I am cooking it with ingredients I need to use before they go off. Any notion of it being “authentic” is almost irrelevant because it is—or should be—ingredient-agnostic, made with what is readily available.

Today, if you order Dublin coddle in a pub, there are ingredients that will almost certainly be in there: sausage, bacon, onions, carrots. But, this meme is typical of what happens with any dish that becomes a narrative of national or local identity; a format repeated over and over to reinforce things we want to believe about who we are. There’s nothing wrong with that. But, as I discovered in Dublin, different factions exist. Some insist that “white” coddle is the real thing, made with milk or cream. Others protest, claiming that “brown” coddle—made with beef stock and Guinness—is the true food emblem of Dublin.

In that warm atmosphere of a witty couple’s Dublin home, I was served paired bowls, my brilliant hostess being such a good teacher that she couldn’t help herself from ensuring I understood both, and the delicious merits of each. But, as she pointed out, she had evolved her own variations on the classic in the way that creative chefs do. For example, she'd developed a version of white coddle with cream reduced right down so that it could be turned into a terrine, served cold as a starter with fried soda bread slices. She is the person who encouraged me to experiment with it to find how I wanted to enjoy it. And, so I did.

Unapologetically a geek, most of my experiments in the kitchen start in the library. One of the things my research taught me is that the versions that Dublin claims as its own are rather newer than one might expect. Even while citing its origins in the 1700s, most people don’t recognise the difference between what emerged then versus the stuff of today’s pub menus.

The legend holds that Dublin coddle is cooked relatively quickly on a stove top—and there is nothing wrong with this—as if it were old tradition. But, digging deeper suggests that this relative speediness of cooking grew out of the eras in which women might have been supposedly liberated from the kitchen, but were still expected to knock up a family dinner after a hard day’s work whether in emerging urban industries or caring for a swathe of children.

From the late 19th century onwards, coddle became known as “Thursday” in the weekly cycle of Dublin household life. Observant Catholic families would dine on coddle on Thursdays, using up any available meat before refraining on Fridays.

Weather vane

I sometimes cook coddle as a one-dish meal on the stove top. This is definitely the path you should take if pressed for time, because you can get it done in under 30 minutes. But, my favoured version is a combination of that approach and older Irish traditions, starting on the stove and moving to the oven. What might be called “beige coddle”.

To some extent, coddle is more a matter of language than cooking technique. The word “coddle” is derived from the medieval terms caudle or caudel. Originating from old French dialects, both terms were used widely across Britain to refer to a whole range of stew or soup-like concoctions, some of them decidedly boozy. Later, Dublin, with its literary traditions and the capital in which the occupying British set up their administrative machine, evolved this into "coddle”. But, at the risk of being beaten up by Dubliners, very similar dishes evolved across Ireland. They simply used different words to describe them.

Part of what makes a purportedly "authentic" Dublin coddle is the alacrity of its cooking, the proud badge declaring you are a resident of an urban environment. But, things evolved differently in rural parts of Ireland, reflecting the patterns of life there. In my research, one of the things I noted was how the oven features, and for good reason, as explained in various recipes or accounts of life far from Dublin.

Some of this is simply logical: starting with browning ingredients on the stove, then slow-cooking them, covered, in an oven. This is what women in rural communities would do, those poor women also responsible for cooking, ensuring that when they and the rest of the the family returned home at sunset, hungry from a day tilling the soil or processing fish, food would be ready.

It could also be a commercial strategy. In early 19th-century journals of an English surveyor sent to improve maps of rural Ireland, he records how the landlady of a rural inn near An Ráth Mór (County Clare) explained to him that the stew (sic) was slow cooked in the oven in order to not let good food go to waste since, being off the beaten track, she could not predict “the number who might arrive nor the hour of their arrival”.

All these stories have inspired my version. For example, while Dublin coddle understandably uses cut up rashers of bacon—standardised rashers being the industrialised way in which bacon is sold in urban centres—I am using the bacon of these 19th-century accounts. It’s something called “cooking bacon" in the UK. You used to be able to find it in every local butcher or in supermarkets but these days it might take more work to track down. One of the reasons I love it for this dish is that while the unwieldy, very thin “rashers” (they practically fall apart) of unsmoked bacon have quite a bit of fat on them, they don’t have any rind. But fear not if you can’t get your hands on it. Simply use rashers of mainstream unsmoked bacon.

One hack to know when cutting the bacon, especially cooking bacon, is not to cut it with a knife but to use kitchen scissors. This is by far the most effective means to trim away as much the fat (or rind) as you wish to remove.

Side steps

Traditionally coddle is served with Irish soda bread, boiled potatoes or mashed potatoes. I'm serving it here with brown Irish soda bread, from a niche bakery brand. Because of the complex history of migrations between Ireland and Britain, it's possible to find good quality Irish soda bread in many outlets across the UK. If you can't get it where you are, it's great with any rustic bread. Alternatively, you could bake you own soda bread.

The whole innovation of Irish soda bread is that is relatively easily baked, more akin to cake baking than bread making; no yeasts or waiting around while resting the dough etc. When I have time, I bake my own, but on this occasion I have taken the lazy route. However, there are plenty of excellent recipes online to show you how easy it is to make.

And, in an act of near sacrilege, I'm also serving it with a salad. This isn't as odd as it sounds. This salad that teases out the green flavours but with a bit of bite in contrast to the smooth flavours of the dish definitely elevates it as a meal.

Winds of change

At the time I decided to cook this dish, the sky was grey, it was raining and it wasn’t warm. I naturally thought of cooking my heavier “brown” coddle with Guinness and beef stock. But, a day later—and continuing—it’s suddenly sunshine and clement pre-spring weather. So, I have gone for my “white” coddle that, though hearty, brims with spring green flavours. I guess we’ll have to wait for autumn for the “brown” (or more accurately my “beige”) version.

The quantities in this recipe serve 3 to 4 diners as a meal or 5 to 6 as a starter, a heartier option for the soup course. When serving it as a starter I usually make it with chipolata sausages and cut all of the vegetables (and the bacon) into smaller pieces than if cooking it as a meal and serve it with melba toast.

3 top tips to get this recipe right:

• The instruction to cut half of the potatoes into small cubes and the other half into slightly larger, bite-sized pieces is not simply whimsy. The small cubes will begin to flake a little, helping to thicken the sauce.

• At the point you add the cream and stir it in, you might find that it starts to form little "flecks", slightly separating. Don't worry about this. As you continue to stir, the cream will assimilate into a smoother, creamy sauce.

• Based on the traditional dish, the spices and herbs in my Dublin coddle are minimal: salt, pepper and parsley. No doubt this is part of its appeal to kids. The temptation to more adventurous cooks might be to add additional herbs to make it more "interesting". If you do—and once you've tasted it you'll see that you don't need to do so—avoid any dried or strongly flavoured herbs. One of the delights of this dish is a green freshness that comes through easily that you don't want to overpower.

Shopping list

for my Dublin coddle

• 3 or 4 pork sausages; cut roughly into quarters

• Approx. 130g unsmoked cooking bacon (or equivalent in rashers); cut into large pieces

• 2 medium brown or red onions (or a mix of both); diced

• 1 leek, sliced

• 3 large carrots; peeled and irregularly cubed

• 5 to 7 small potatoes; peeled; half cut into small pieces, half into larger, bit-size pieces

• 1.5tbspns unsalted butter

• 500ml vegetable stock

• Approx. 125ml single cream

• 1 cup broad beans, fresh or frozen (or garden peas)

• A large clasp of fresh parsley; finely chopped

• A small clasp of chives, chopped (optional, for garnish)

• Salt and black pepper to flavour

Unsmoked cooking bacon

Sides

• Traditionally Irish brown soda bread, boiled potatoes or mashed potatoes

• Crunchy leaf salad

  • Cos lettuce

  • Red chicory

  • Fresh dill

  • Apple cider and rapeseed oil

  • Salt and pepper

Cooking method

the Dublin coddle

1. Add 2tbspns of butter to a large pot with a lid. Heat on a medium heat. Once hot, add the onions and leek and stir in. When it starts to sizzle, reduce the heat and cover. Sweat from about 4 to 5mins

2. When the onions begin to soften, add the the carrots and potatoes and stir in. Re-cover, slightly increase the heat and cook for about 4mins. If the ingredients begin to stick, add a dash of the vegetable stock

3. Add the bacon and stir in. When the bacon starts to exude its juices and all pieces have changed colour, pour in three quarters of the vegetable stock. Add a little salt and freshly ground black pepper. Increase the heat, bringing to a healthy simmer. After a minute, reduce to a gentle simmer, re-cover, and simmer for 10mins

4. While the pot simmers, in a separate pan, melt half a tablespoon of butter on a medium-high heat. Partially brown the sausage pieces: you're not looking to cook the sausage, merely to get them brown enough in places; to release those fats and flavours and to give a little "browned" depth to the coddle

5. Once the ingredients have simmered for 10mins, add the browned sausage and half of the chopped parsley to the pot. Add the remaining stock and stir in. Re-cover and gently simmer for a further 10mins, stirring occasionally

6. Add the broad beans, stir in and simmer for a minute. Then add the cream and stir in. Re-cover and simmer for a further 6 to 8mins, stirring occasionally. Don't worry if the cream appears to separate at first. As it cooks in—and you continue to stir—it will assimilate into a smooth, creamier sauce

7. Remove from the heat and take to table with brown soda bread (and any sides you might want)

the side salad

1. In individual salad bowls—or a salad serving bowl—tear washed Cos lettuce and red chicory leaves and toss

2. Mix roughly equal parts of the cider and oil. Add the chopped dill and stir in.

3. Pour over the dressing and toss shortly before taking to table. Finally season with a little salt and pepper

Alternatives

Perhaps unexpectedly, it is very easy to turn this into a lactovegetarian dish. Simply replace the bacon with tempeh bacon or one of the numerous plant-based "bacons" on the market, and the sausages with vegan sausages. It's important that they are of the firmer variety, such as Quorn sausages. Definitely brown your Quorn sausages—remember, it's partly about what that browning brings to the flavour table. If using tempeh bacon, add this later in the process—e.g. just before adding the cream—otherwise it tends to break up.

It's might also be possible to make a vegan version using margarine or rapeseed oil instead of butter and using one of the vegan plant-based creams on the market. Many brands claim that they are suitable for cooking. I say "might" because I have never tried it.

It's definitely possible to make a pescatarian version. Known by another name, it's made in Scotland using fish stock, smoked haddock, cod and langoustine tails. Very similar to Cullen skink, it contains all the same elements—one of the reasons I have included leek here. Obviously, The two types of fish go in a lot later, once the potatoes and carrots are fully cooked. And the langoustine tails go in right at the end once the cream has been added.

Pairings

Traditionally this is a dish served with dark Irish beers such as Guinness or Murphy's and I have no argument with that.

The only other times I have ever had it with wine is when serving it as a starter for grown-ups. Despite the sausage and bacon, I have always found "white" coddle is better suited to whites. I remember it working very well with a chilled white Rioja—though I can't remember which—and a Kellerei Eisacktal - Cantina Valle Isarco Aristos Sylvaner, though I cannot remember the vintage.

But, since I have mostly made this dish for hordes of kids, I have probably most often had it with elderflower cordiale and sparkling water or a zero-alcohol beer shandy, both of which work wonderfully.