Hog’s pudding is the white pudding of Cornwall and Devon: a fat, pale sausage about two inches across, sold already cooked, sliced and fried for breakfast. It is pork, pork fat and a cereal — rusk, bread, oats or barley — with a seasoning that is warmer and more peppery than an Irish or Scottish white pudding; Cornish versions lean on white pepper, mace and nutmeg, some West Country ones on black pepper, cumin and garlic. The diagnostic is that it is a cooked, sliceable pudding made of pork, not a fresh link and not a grain-and-suet mealie pudding. It belongs to the family of British puddings that stretched a pig’s meat with cereal so that nothing went to waste, and it survives as a West Country regional the way black pudding survives in the north. Be aware that the name covers two different things: a plain pork-and-cereal pudding, and an older offal version closer to haggis. This recipe is the first kind, which is what Cornish butchers mostly sell today. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from Marianski’s Cornish hog’s pudding and is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1930 g (4 lb 4 oz) lean pork shoulder, trimmed — 85%
- 340 g (12.0 oz) pork back fat — 15%
CEREAL (% of meat weight)
- 522 g dry rusk or dried white breadcrumbs (23%)
- 704 g cold water (31%)
SEASONING (% of meat weight)
- 42 g fine salt (1.85%)
- 14 g white pepper (0.6%)
- 3.4 g mace (0.15%)
- 3.4 g nutmeg (0.15%)
- 3.4 g dried thyme, rubbed (0.15%)
- 1.1 g cayenne (0.05%)
- 50 mm beef middle or 50 mm fibrous or cellulose casing (or a lined loaf tin)
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: Black Pepper and mace. The nearest relatives in the collection are Irish White Pudding (oats and liver) and Mealie Pudding (Scottish Oatmeal White Pudding) (oats and suet, no meat).
- Soak the rusk: stir the rusk into the water and let it absorb completely, about 10 minutes.
- Grind fine: chill meat and fat hard and grind both through a 3 mm (1/8”) plate. A hog’s pudding is smooth enough to slice thin and fry; a coarse grind falls apart in the pan.
- Mix: combine the meat, seasonings and soaked rusk and mix until uniform and sticky, about 3 minutes.
- Taste: fry a spoonful. It should be mild, peppery and warm with mace — gentler than a sausage, because it is eaten with eggs and bacon.
- Stuff: fill the 50 mm casing firmly, tie off in 10–12 in (25–30 cm) lengths, and prick any air pockets with a sterilised pin. Or pack into a lined loaf tin and cover with foil.
- Poach — never boil: lower into water at 80 °C / 176 °F and hold it there, about 40–45 minutes, until the centre reads 72 °C / 160 °F. Boiling bursts the casing and drives the fat out. For a loaf tin, bake in a water bath at 160 °C / 325 °F to the same internal temperature.
- Chill: plunge into ice water for 10 minutes, then dry and refrigerate overnight. It must be cold and set before it will slice.
- Serve: slice 1 cm thick and fry in butter or bacon fat until browned, 2–3 minutes a side. It is fully cooked already; you are heating and crisping it.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The backbone is Marianski’s “Hog’s Pudding – Cornish”: 550 g lean pork, 100 g fat, 150 g rusk and 200 g water per kilogram, with 12 g salt, 4 g white pepper, 1 g each mace and nutmeg, 1 g thyme and 0.3 g cayenne; 3 mm grind; wide hog or beef casing; cooked at 80 °C to 72 °C internal. Re-based on the meat here: (1) meat split 85/15 lean to fat, as his 550/100; (2) rusk 23% and water 31% of meat weight, as his ratio; (3) salt raised to 1.85% of meat because his 12 g is per kilogram of the whole mix, which would be under-salted for a pudding eaten in thick slices. Untested.
Two puddings under one name. Marianski also publishes a “West Country” hog’s pudding that is a different animal: semi-fat pork with hearts, liver and lungs, bound with cooked buckwheat groats and seasoned with black pepper, cumin, basil and garlic, in a 50 mm casing — he calls it “a West Country haggis”. Wikipedia’s description blends the two (pork, fat, suet, bread, oatmeal or barley; pepper, cumin, basil and garlic). Lung is not allowed in US food (see Haggis (US-Legal, No Lung)), so the offal version would have to drop it here.
Where hog’s pudding came from. It is a West Country member of the British cereal-pudding family — black pudding, white pudding, mealie pudding, haggis — all of them ways of turning the parts of a pig that would not keep into something that would last a few days after the killing. No founding date is documented. Its Cornish name is given as gosogen. It is now a breakfast item in Cornwall and Devon, sliced and fried with the full English, and some butchers sell it whole for boiling.
Variations. Oatmeal or pearl barley in place of rusk; added suet; a garlic-and-cumin seasoning in parts of Devon; more pepper in Cornwall. Some modern versions are milder and look like a large, pale frankfurter.
Sourcing and gear. Beef middles are the natural casing for 50 mm; fibrous casings are easier and peel off. A loaf tin works and slices squarer.
Still open. No historic Cornish or Devon recipe has been compared, and the date and meaning of gosogen are unverified.
Read more on the site. Puddings and Loaves · The Family Tree