The late 19th-century Handbook of Invalid Cooking by Mary Boland contains a simple recipe for the dish. My research suggests that the pudding spread to lots of places in Ireland-in part, perhaps, thanks to its blandness, many viewed it as suitable fare for the ill and infirm. I’m expecting something light, a melt-in-the-mouth blancmange but with a unique character in terms of either flavor or texture. As it chills, I wonder how it will turn out. Once light enough, I pour the mixture into a small serving bowl and leave it to set in the fridge for a few hours. To produce a slightly foamy texture-picture an embryonic meringue-I fold in a separated, whisked egg white. Then, I whisk an egg yolk, some sugar, and a drop of vanilla essence into the milk. Tough and chewy, the seaweed itself is inedible. At this point, I lift out the carrageen and discard it. The milk also takes on a gentle purple hue-and a heady tang of the beach. This process forces a surprising amount of jelly out of the seaweed, causing the milk to become very gloopy. Various recipes that I discover online suggest boiling it in the milk for 20 minutes, which I do. Having revived the carrageen with warm water, I lift it out and place it in milk for boiling. Rather, it has a hint of iodine, more medicinal than marine. When I taste the seaweed at this stage, it is not salty. This is the first awakening of the jelly that has begun to seep out of it. But the odd thing about it is the immediate slipperiness of its rehydrated surface. To the touch, carrageen feels like a piece of tough, ultra-smooth and wet leather. It has a whiff of the sea at this stage, slightly astringent and with some ocean griminess to boot. But the seaweed unfurls instantly when touched by water, taking on its customary glossy red color and silky texture. The carrageen in my bowl is brown and crusty. A branching alga, carrageen is easy to identify in the sea by its vibrant red, undulating fronds. But it is distributed around the world, growing in similar habitats in much of Europe, Canada, the United States, and parts of Asia. And so I ended up in my kitchen one evening with my wife, pouring warm water into a bowl over a small clump of dried carrageen, or Chondrus crispus to give it its Latin name.Ĭommonly called Irish moss, carrageen grows all over the Irish coast, in rocky places and estuaries. What on Earth did it taste like? I had to make it. Regardless, I was fascinated by the thought of combining dairy and seaweed. I asked a few friends but they, too, were oblivious. A form of blancmange made with carrageen, a common seaweed on Ireland’s coast.ĭespite growing up in Northern Ireland, I had never heard of this dessert. “Carrageen moss pudding,” someone tweeted while discussing traditional fare. But it’s just something that popped up on Twitter. Or by hearing about it in an old pub late one night. I’d like to tell you that I found out about Irish seaweed pudding while leafing through chronicles in a university library.
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