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coddle

Ireland: Dublin Coddle

This traditional supper dish of sausages, bacon, onions and potatoes dates back at least as far as the early eighteenth century. It seems to be more of a city dish than a rural one: it was a favorite of Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels and dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.

The name of the dish is probably descended from the older word caudle, derived from a French word meaning "to boil gently, parboil, or stew". The more recent version of the verb, "coddle," is still applied to gently cooked eggs; and in the case of Dublin coddle, it's become a noun, applied to a dish that is cooked very slowly at low temperatures.

In Dublin itself, coddle retains its reputation as a dish that can be prepared ahead of time and left in a very slow oven while the people who're going to eat it have to be out of the house for a while -- in particular, at a funeral: when everyone returns for the wake, the dish will be ready, and won't have suffered from being left in the oven a little longer than planned. While this is a simple dish, its quality depends entirely on the quality of the raw materials you use to make it -- so it's important to find the best ingredients you can.

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