A one-pot Liberties tenement supper of sausages, bacon, onions and potatoes simmered slowly in a pale stock until the sausages bloat and the potatoes soak up the fat. The dish saved the household scraps the day before payday.
Coddle emerged in the eighteenth-century Liberties tenements as a one-pot way to use up the week's leftover sausages and bacon rashers before they spoiled. The recipe held no roasted vegetables and was famously deglazed only with cooking water, never browned. Jonathan Swift and James Joyce both wrote about coddle; Joyce's Leopold Bloom passes a coddle pot in Ulysses. The dish is the working-class Dublin signature, served still at Spitalfields on The Coombe, The Brazen Head and Gallagher's Boxty House. The pale, broth-soaked colour is the dish's tell; properly cooked, the sausages should split.
4 editor picks for Dublin coddle in Dublin, ranked by editorial score. All Dublin signature dishes · Dublin coddle across every city.
Spitalfields ★ 4.5
the-liberties · 25 The Coombe, Dublin 8, D08 YV07
Spitalfields on The Coombe in Dublin's Liberties, a Michelin Bib Gourmand pub-set kitchen serving the city's most considered classical Irish menu.
The Stag's Head ★ 4.5
south-city-centre · 1 Dame Court, Dublin 2, D02 TW84
The Stag's Head on Dame Court in Dublin 2, a Victorian pub since 1860 with original mahogany and a stained-glass roof, the city's archetypal Dublin pub interior.
The Brazen Head ★ 4.4
the-liberties · 20 Bridge Street Lower, Dublin 8, D08 WC64
The Brazen Head on Bridge Street Lower in Dublin 8, established 1198 as Ireland's oldest pub, the present 1754 coaching inn serves Irish stew and trad sessions nightly.
Gallagher's Boxty House ★ 4.2
temple-bar · 20-21 Temple Bar, Dublin 2, D02 ET66
Gallagher's Boxty House on Temple Bar in Dublin, Pádraic Óg Gallagher's three-room canon of boxty, coddle and smoked salmon, the boxty reference in town.