The black pudding tower is a lesson in design

A dish that has lived in my memory for nearly twenty years for all the wrong reasons. From Lancashire to New York and Singapore, a cautionary tale of culinary misadventure.

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

I think about the black pudding tower of Pendle as I’ve dubbed it at least a couple of times a year. It was in the days before camera phones were ubiquitous. Instagram didn’t exist, and Facebook was in its infancy. So, it lives in my memory. And here’s the thing. I have such a vivid recollection of this dish, in a way I don’t about many of those I’ve eaten in more recent years. I wonder whether the presence of the smartphone, always to hand, a “second brain,” has wired me to forget, because it’s all in the cloud if I need a reminder.

I’m struggling for the exact year, but I’d say it was the early to mid-aughts. Let’s say 2005. The place, an east Lancashire village, nestled into the Pennines, and on the border. You can walk over the tops into Yorkshire. Wuthering Heights country as it happens. Dry stone walls and dramatic moorland; names like Cat Stone Hill, Ravens Scar, and Old Ibber Dike that could be straight from the Bronte’s or a fictional north of thrones and copious bloodshed.

A village pub, centuries old and grade two listed, with worn stone floors, low ceilings, and the smell that all pubs had back then. A faint concoction of cigarette smoke, spilt and stale ale, a vinegar whiff, and a meeting of gravy, suet, and cooking oil. The pub is long closed, split into housing, so again it will always just live in memory.

This pub was metres from my parents’ home. My late stepdad Peter and I would take up a spot at the bar, sink pints and banter with the bartender and other locals. How Burnley were doing – then in the second tier of English football – probably some local gossip, and always at least one who’d stray into politics and be told to “get back in his box.” Brexit wasn’t even a whisper. And then a new tenant took it on. Things changed. Tables in the main bar were always set with cutlery, drinkers were discouraged from their regular spots, and bookings were taken. The gastro pub cometh.

Grinning at me over the menu and with a hint of mischief Peter said, “chap thinks he’s fucking Gordon Ramsay.” It wasn’t a compliment. This was the era of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, before he took it to the US, when we first met deluded restaurateurs and chefs with an imbalance of ambition and basic sense. When Gordon puking in a backyard (not far away as the crow flies) was a fresh format.

Thinking back, I expect I ordered on the basis that I love black pudding, and I’d never eaten it as a tower. Simple equation. But I don’t know what my expectations were of what was a starter. I’m sure it wasn’t what appeared through the swing door. A vision that has stayed with me for almost twenty years.  

A potter making bespoke collections for fine dining restaurants once told me that you design plates more for ease of use than looks; that ultimately a plate can look amazing but if a server can’t easily pick it up or a kitchen porter can’t stack it in the dishwasher then it’s not performing its function. The same could be said for a menu, and so the black pudding tower is a lesson in design.