Thornton Stewart discovers what makes a black pudding special

BLACK pudding - it's a bit of a Marmitetype food. People either love it or hate it.

But increasing numbers are appreciating a pudding produced to a unique recipe by a woman called Doreen Haigh, from Kirklington, near Bedale, and produced in increasing quatities by her son, Duncan.

The Haighs - Arthur Haigh & Son is the name of their business - produce the puddings and other meat products from their base at Dalton Airfield, near Thirsk.

About a tonne a week of the pudding is produced and it ends up in some of the best restaurants in Yorkshire and further afield - there are now stockists in Kent and Edinburgh and, the self-proclaimed capital of the black pudding - Lancashire.

The pudding even has it's own Facebook page.

The key to the pudding's unique qaulity is in the baking. Most black pudding is boiled, but back in the 1980s when the Haighs had the village butcher's shop in Kirklington, Doreen came up with the idea of baking it in the oven rather than boiling it. Baking makes for a drier, meatier texture.

The Haighs' business took off and rapidly expanded beyond the cramped village shop to the production unit at Dalton.

Mr Haigh said after some initial tweaking of his mother's recipe, it had remained unchanged.

"What we have now is very popular, he added. "Chefs like to use it in all sorts of ways but the most popular is as an accompaniment to pork."

He said he was aware of a restaurant in Harrogate that included it in a porkserved-three-ways dish that sold for almost £30, but he was also aware that Scotts, the fish and chip shop in Helmsley, was serving a deep-fried version.

The Haighs' business remains a family one. Doreen, who is 70 this year, still works three days a week and Mr Haigh's wife, Jayne, is also a member of the team.

Doreen's Black Pudding

The pudding is sold in a number of sizes - 500g slabs or 20cmlong triangular packs, for example, and retails for about £6 per kilo

Stockists include Blackwell's Butchers, Norton; Richard Welford Butchers, Masham; Johnson Butchers, Thirsk; Ampleforth Store; Ainsty Farm Shop, Green Hammerton; Lealholm Shop; Carricks of Snape; Arthur Haigh & Son; 01845-578227; yorkshireblackpudding.co.uk