Carrageen Moss Pudding

Carrageen is a small purple-red seaweed, Chondrus crispus, that grows on Atlantic rock and takes its English name from Carraigin, a place in Waterford. Simmered in milk it releases polysaccharides that set the liquid on cooling without any gelatine, and the resulting pudding - milk, a handful of dried carrageen, sugar, a vanilla pod or lemon zest, sometimes an egg yolk, strained and chilled - is silky, barely set and much lighter than a panna cotta. It was a staple invalid and children's food along the coast for generations, when the seaweed was gathered, bleached in the sun on the rocks and dried for winter. Myrtle Allen at Ballymaloe kept it on the menu through the decades when it was otherwise vanishing, which is largely why it is still made. The refined carrageenan used industrially as a thickener is a different thing from the whole dried weed.

What you actually see

• The setting - milk gelled by the seaweed alone, with no gelatine.
• The texture - barely set and silky, far lighter than a panna cotta.
• The gathering - harvested, sun-bleached and dried on the rocks for winter.
• The Ballymaloe link - kept alive on that menu when it was fading elsewhere.

When to go

Any time; it appears on the menus of restaurants that cook Irish food seriously rather than in ordinary pubs. Dried carrageen is sold in coastal shops for making it at home.

Honest expectations

Not widely available - it takes looking for outside a handful of restaurants. The texture and faint marine note divide people. Industrial carrageenan is a different product and the two are often confused.

Nearby

Ballymaloe in east Cork is the best-known place to eat it; coastal shops sell the dried weed.