A white pudding has nothing to do with a dessert. In the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) it is defined as “a pudding or sausage stuffed with oatmeal, suet, salt, pepper and onions”. It is also known as mealie pudding.
Although the Scots diet has long been maligned by many, if you were working the fields from dawn to dusk a high fat and calorific diet made sense for those lucky enough to afford it.
The dish has a long pedigree. One early example in DSL comes from David Herd’s The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs (1769): “First they ate the white puddings and then they ate the black”. What appears to be a shopping list is documented by John Galt in his 1833 Howdie [midwife]: “Mutton-hams, white puddings, salt fish, and half a cheese”.
DSL then skips a century to give us this from the Herald in December 2000: “A mission was sent out to the local chipper for a white pudding supper”. Which perhaps was a challenge given this from the Scotsman (2002): “Remember when a chip shop sold chips and little else? The choice was cod or haddock or possibly, in the more outré chippies, white pudding.”
The next year a description from a visitor sampling local cuisine was recorded in the Edinburgh Evening News (2003): “In Snax I was offered a choice of sausage, which included square sausage which was nice… then I think they’re called white pudding which I tried for the first time and liked”.
Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here