Black Pudding AKA Blood Pudding

Have I tried a black pudding? I’ll eat anything – I’m not finicky – but that’s not to say it takes any courage to eat black puddings because I find them delicious.

Mark Lanegan

If you have a weak stomach read no further.

Tilly: And forsake many of the continental sausages with ingredients

better not discussed?

Just exactly is Black Pudding? It is actually a sausage made from pig’s blood. Black pudding aka blood pudding dates back to ancient Greece. “Aphtonitas, the inventor of blood sausage.” According to Jean-Francois Revel a food historian.

Onwards to Ancient Rome, and of course, my favorite person, “Apicius”, shows up again with, of course, the recipe:

“Black Pudding

Botellum sic facies: sex ovi vitellis coctis, nucleis pineis concisei cepam, porrum concisum, ius crudum misces, piper minutum et sic intestinum farcies. Adidies liquamen et vinum et sic coques.

“Blood sausage is made as follows: 6 hard-boiled egg yolks, finely chopped pine kernels mixed with onion, finely sliced leek. Mix raw blood with finely ground pepper and fill a pig’s intestine with this. Add wine and liquamen and cook. (Ap. 55)

“Take 1 litre of blood, 6 hard-boiled egg yolks, 1 small leek, 1 onion, 200 g pine kernels and 3 teaspoons of finely ground pepper. Season the blood with salt. Chop the onion and the leek finely in a food-processor. Add the mashed egg yolks, then the blood, and mix thoroughly. Funnel the mixture with the coarsely chopped pine kernels into a pig’s intestine, then twist in into sausages. Put the sausages into cold white wine with garum and bring it slowly to the boil. Simmer until they are cooked.”

Onwards to 15^th-century England, and the recipe used porpoise in the “pudding” eaten just by the nobility.

Moving on to 19^th-century Scotland, changing the recipe to either cow or sheep blood.

Later in the 19^th-century the recipe traveled to Cork, Ireland. Where they used only pork blood.

Olive: Tilly don’t look in your old cookbooks from the 19^th-century because it was omitted because the cookbooks sold only to the urban housewives. You know people like you.

Tilly: I declare to all and sundry, in the sight of God, that I have never been married to a house, urban or otherwise.

Today, black pudding is made with fresh blood, adding a bit of fat, rusk, and of course seasonings. With oats or barley to thicken and absorb the blood. Some even use breadcrumbs or flour depending on the texture they want.

Olive: Tilly, don’t know if it is popular in your neck of the woods but it is still very popular in the northern areas.

Tilly: Oh, yes, very popular. Though I find a number on offer are indifferent and need more ginger and spice. They are very good with scallops on a bed of bashed fresh peas (cooked!). The mother of an Italian boyfriend gave me the recipe for a pear and black pudding stuffing for poultry. It was delicious. I must find the piece of paper …

So how do you cook this “pudding” well it can be grilled, fried, baked or boiled in its skin? It can also be eaten cold because it is cooked in production.

Olive: Tilly, this is a sausage so why, oh why do y’all over there call it a pudding?

Tilly: It is frequently defended as a “pudding” because it is a mixture, often containing oatmeal and suet, steamed or boiled, despite its sausage shape.

I found this on Facebook:

Pudding is not a dessert, it is a means of cooking generally involving boiling or steaming. The ingredients may be savoury or sweet, i.e. steak and kidney pudding, black pudding , white pudding all of which are savoury or they can be sweet, like Christmas Pudding, Spotted Dick, which are sweet.

What you call your food in the US, is your business, but as long as you eat Chitterlings, do not try and be superior about food. – Daniel Stalker

P.S. Sneem Black Pudding granted special European status:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191223224914/https://www.radiokerry.ie/sneem-black-pudding-granted-special-european-status/

“Bacon ten on ten, button mushrooms–bingo, black pudding–snap. Minor criticism, more distance between the eggs & the beans! I may mix but I want that to be my decision.” 

Alan Partridge

Last bit of trivia: The annual World Black Pudding Throwing Championships are held in Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester. The contestants throw Black Puddings at a 20ft (6m) platform holding Yorkshire puddings with the aim of knocking off as many of them as possible from it. The story behind the contest is based on an incident during the Wars of the Roses in the 1400s, when the armies for the Royal Houses of Lancaster and York ran out of ammunition and threw food at each other. [VI]Source: M.E.N.

Olive and Tilly