16^th century

Black Pudding

Just like the haggis, the black pudding originated centuries before the first written word about it. A blood pudding appeared in Homer’s Odyssey around 800 BCE, and the Romans had several recipes for it.

In times when food was scarce, animals would be bled to create black pudding in trays or as cakes. A little milk and oatmeal would be added, and the pudding would be the only source of protein. From letters of the period, we know this custom was still very much alive in the eighteenth century, particularly in the Scottish Highlands where the rough landscape made it difficult to grow crops and rear cattle.

It is in the north that the popularity of black pudding remains the greatest, with several counties preparing their own regional variety. Two particular rivals – Yorkshire and Lancashire – fight out the battle of the best black pudding by hosting the Black Pudding Throwing Championship each year. The rivalry dates back to the medieval Wars of the Roses, when the houses of York and Lancaster each made claim to the English throne, but it seems today the war is being fought on culinary grounds rather than the battlefield.

Black pudding was not just food for the peasantry, it was also fit for the most noble. The extravagant banquets held by King Henry VIII at Hampton Court included black pudding, and recipes for the dish appeared in cookery books aimed at court cooks rather than the amateur cook or domestic housewife. The spices used in those early recipes – cinnamon, cloves, mace, pepper and ginger – were all very expensive and a way for the king to show off his wealth and status. Regular folk would not have had access to those spices and would have used wild herbs such as pennyroyal, savory and fennel seeds, or no flavourings at all.

To make blacke puddings.

Take great otmeale and lay it in milke to steepe, then take sheepes bloud and put to it, and take Oxe white and mince into it, then take a fewe sweet hearbes and two or three leeke blades, and choppe them very small, and then put into it the yolkes of some egges, and season it with Cynamon, ginger, cloues, Mace, pepper and salt,

and so fill them.

Thomas Dawson, The Good Huswifes Jewell, 1596

Black pudding is certainly not a dish unique to Britain and Ireland; Belgium has its beuling, France its boudin, Finland has mustamakkara and Hungary has véres hurka. These are just a few examples. In fact, Sweden still makes cakes from blood: blodplättar are blood pancakes that can also be found in parts of eastern Europe, Finland and Estonia.

It is safe to say that using animal blood has been part of food culture for many centuries. As well as turning the blood into some kind of sausage or cake, Hungary, Sweden, Poland and a few Asian countries have a tradition of blood soups, or using blood to thicken sauces. In some parts of Italy, not only are several blood sausages made but the fresh warm blood is even mixed with milk and chocolate at pig-slaughtering feasts as a treat for the children.

Many of these dishes might sound strange to us; we have become so far removed from the fact that there are animals needed to provide us with meat that we no longer feel the need to use up the entire beast. But I imagine if you raise your own animals, as they did in those times, you wouldn’t want to see anything go to waste.

Black pudding has seen a revival in Britain. It’s back on the breakfast plate, alongside bacon, eggs, mushrooms, baked beans and hash browns as an essential ingredient of the ‘full English’. It’s also in gourmet dishes, transformed into croquettes (as with haggis) and as a partner to delicate seafood such as scallops, monkfish and turbot. It is back, and not just for those on the breadline, but on the menu at farm shops, Michelin-starred restaurants, and street food stalls.

Surprisingly, black pudding does have health benefits. It has relatively few kilojoules (calories), especially compared to other types of sausage, and is rich in iron and zinc, two nutrients that are frequently depleted in the average adult’s body. Raw blood, however, is toxic and should not be eaten without cooking.

To try your hand at black pudding, you can purchase powdered blood from sausage supply companies, although I prefer to use my local farm and keep their pigs’ blood in the freezer until needed. Whatever you do when you come to stay at my house, stay away from the ice-cream containers in my freezer that contain a raspberry-looking sorbet: it’s not ice cream!

I have not used diced fat in this pudding, but you can if you like; simply cut pork back fat into small dice and add at the end when your mixture is cooling. I prefer a black pudding like the ones I grew up with. It was one of my favourite meals: black pudding with apple sauce and bread.