Don't historians now think that the Celts didn't set foot in the British Isles anyway?
Miss P. is right. Black pudding is one of the many by-products of the pig.
Mind you, the Yorkshire version has lumps of fat in it, not to my taste.
I prefer the Scottish version.

"The addition of beans and mushrooms is not really traditional Irish Breakfast"

Neither are bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding (until recent foodie fads, Clonakilty was famous for the severity of its famine, not its gastro-inventions) or anything except potatoes, point and a spot of buttermilk if the rent wasn't due.

When i mentioned Traditional Irish Breakfast, I wasnt going back as far as The Famine.. chill!

Hows about Coddle for lunch then if the Big Irish Brekkie doesn't appeal? True traditional Dublin Stew? Real test of the digestive system you got! Some of the best gourmet restaurants in Ireland serve black pudding for dinner as starters or whatever so it is seriously a delicious feast for the taste buds and and its contains less animal products than true meat as cereal, etc. is in it too.

Cailin...Ahhh Pat Short! I should know better and I can't stand Pat Kenny and avoid watching him its so painful to see him interview anyone.

The famine reference is a bit too much. Pudding bacon sausage etc have always been a part of Irish breakfasts if you were lucky enough to have all of this food in plent amounts. Smaller versions probably and not every day if you had 10 kids. My grandad also always kept the frying pan from breakfast with the grease and fat in it. When he had his dinner he would warm it up again and drip over his dinner...mostly on the spuds.Its gross but as a kid it was a way of getting a bit extra fat into you from what my mum said, epsecially if you were poor.

Careful, now you're making me miss my ex...his mother made a tremendous coddle which I absolutely cannot replicate!

The breakfasts are great (minus the blood or black pudding in my case) but take care; in a two-week period we put on ten pounds despite walking miles & miles.

As for the black pudding being found in other places...My husband and I grew up in a small rural town in southern Illinois. Probably 99% of the residents are of German descent. Blood sausage, very similar to black pudding, was, and probably still is, common there. In fact, the family friend who was with us in Ireland last week said he really enjoyed the black pudding because it reminded him so much of the blood sausage he was always served as a kid. Now, my husband doesn't like black pudding as well as blood sausage so it's obviously not exactly the same. But the same idea.

If you are one that must have pepper on everything, pick up some packets at McDonalds or Wendys before you leave. They use white pepper and it took me a full week to figure out what was smelling every time I used pepper.

Anyone else notice that?

oldie writes: "Don't historians now think that the Celts didn't set foot in the British Isles anyway?"

Whatever! Irish folklore to this day has people coming from 'sunny lands to the south' to immigrate to the Emerald Isle. That was many centuries before the Spanish Armada.

Thats what my (RIP) Mayo Mother used to tell us; and that's what people in Mayo still believe from stories I heard in Belmullet. One might expect more folklore like that from Ireland's south coast ...