Black pudding

Black pudding or blood pudding is a sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. Blood sausage is a more recent North American translation for the German moniker "Blutwurst". Blood Sausage has become a useful term for similar blood-based solid foods around the world.

Pig or cattle blood is most often used; sheep and goat blood are used to a lesser extent. Blood from poultry, horses and other animals are used more rarely. Typical fillers include meat, fat, suet, bread, barley and oatmeal.

History
Sausages containing blood are traditional throughout the world and there are ancient references to them, e. g. from Homer's Odyssey: As when a man besides a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood and turns it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted...

Regional variants


Black pudding is usually served as part of a traditional full breakfast in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The further addition of the similar white pudding is an important feature of the traditional Irish breakfast. Black pudding can be eaten uncooked but is often grilled or boiled in its skin.

The Lancashire town of Bury is noted for its black pudding, as is the west County Cork town of Clonakilty, which exports black pudding as a delicacy item. Black and white pudding, as well as a third variant from Fife: – red pudding – are served battered at chip shops in Scotland and England as an alternative to fish and chips.

Continental Europe
The most common variant of German Blutwurst is made from fatty pork meat, bovine blood and filler such as barley. Though already cooked and "ready to eat" it is usually served warm. In the Rhineland, where it is also traditionally made from horse meat, fried Blutwurst is a part of various dishes. Another German variant is Zungenwurst, which is Blutwurst mixed with pieces of pickled pig's tongue.

In France boudin is part of traditional cold or warm dishes or part of charcuterie plates. It may also be called boudin noir.

In Belgium, bloedworst or beuling is sold either in 4 inch diameter slices, or individual sausages the size of a banana. It is generally pan fried; sometimes apples are cooked alongside or on top of the pieces. It is also eaten with apple sauce, brown sugar or syrup.

Similarly Czech jelito is made from pork, pig's blood and groats; the stuffing served by itself, unformed is called prejt.

Spanish morcilla has many variants. The most well known and widespread is "morcilla de Burgos" which mainly contains pork blood and fat, rice, onions, and salt. In Albacete and La Mancha the morcilla has no rice that it is replaced by onion (which changes completely the texture). It is claimed that this is the original morcilla and rice was introduced in them to reduce costs (rice expands while onion reduces thus needing more raw material). Other varieties introduce breadcrumbs, pine nuts, almonds and vary the proportions of the other ingredients or flavorings, producing even a sweet morcilla from Galicia in the northwestern region, wich is fried and served most commonly as a dessert.

In Portuguese cuisine there are also many varieties of black pudding, ranging from some similar to the Spanish morcilla, known in Portuguese as morcela, to some done only with blood (known as chouriço de sangue).

In Eastern Europe, kishka is made with pig's blood and buckwheat kasha, it is also known in Russia as krovyanka (кровянка) or krovyanaya kolbasa (кровяная колбаса, blood sausage) and Poland as kaszanka. In Hungary, véres hurka is made with rice, pig's blood and pork.

In Sweden, blodpudding is served but there are also varieties and similarities such as blodkorv (blood sausage), blodplättar (blood pancakes) and palt.

Alongside the mustamakkara in Finland, a dish similar to black pudding is made by making batter out of pig's blood and baking it like pancakes. Traditionally rye- or oatflour is used and minced onion is added to the mix. This dish is called veriohukainen (blood pancake).

The Americas


Among English-speaking North Americans, the consumption of black pudding and similar dishes is largely confined to certain ethnic groups with strong Old World traditions as well such as French Canadians and immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and so forth. Blood sausages are very difficult to find in American supermarkets.

An Italian-American version of black pudding in the San Francisco Bay area is called "Biroldo" and has pine nuts, raisins, spices, pig snouts and either pig's or cow's blood.

Cajun boudin is a fresh sausage made with green onions, pork, and rice; pig's blood is sometimes added to produce "boudin noir".

In many areas of Latin America (as in Spain) morcilla is served. Morcilla is made with a filler of rice and/or onions, and seasoned with paprika and other spices. In Puerto Rico it is made spicy-hot and served fried. In parts of South America, morcilla is a traditional component of the asado, a regional mixed grill or barbecue meal. Morcilla is also eaten inside a sandwich called "morcipán," especially in Argentina and other Río de la Plata countries; in Uruguay, although not in Argentina, a sweet and sour version including raisins and pine nuts is popular. In Chile it's called prieta. In Colombia, it's either called morcilla or rellena, and is usually filled with rice and peas. Contrary to beliefs, this version is usually deep-fried, and though is quite a health risk, its taste is quite popular.

In Guyana, the main ingredient in black pudding is cooked rice seasoned with traditional Caribbean herbs, such as thyme and basil. The rice is mixed with cow's blood, stuffed into pig intestine, and boiled until firm. It is served as an appetizer or snack, often with any type of hot sauce, mild to hot, depending on preference and regional area.

In Suriname, black pudding is also known under the Dutch name bloedworst, and white pudding under the also Dutch name vleesworst.

Asia
Across Asia, various people create foods from congealed animal blood. Most of these foods do not have casing and might be considered a version of sliced sausage.

In Taiwan, pig blood cake is made of pork blood and sticky rice. It is fried or steamed as a snack or cooked in a hot pot.

A similar dish from the Philippines, dinuguan (from the word dugo meaning "blood") is a stew consisting of diced beef or pork meat and organs with pig or cow blood. Some Filipinos also call this "chocolate meat".

In China, "blood tofu", is most often made with pig's or duck's blood, although chicken's or cow's blood may also be used. Like the above dishes, this has no casing but is simply cut into rectangular pieces and cooked.

In resource-poor Tibet, congealed yak's blood is a traditional food.

The majority of Korea's soondae (순대) can be categorized as blood sausage. The most common type of soondae is made of potato noodle (dangmyon), barley, and pig's blood but some variants contain sesame leaves, green onion, fermented soy paste (dwen-jang), sweet rice, kimchi, bean sprouts, in addition to the common ingredients.

Additional varieties
Other varieties of blood sausage include blodpølse (Norway and Denmark), boudin noir (France), tongeworst (with added pigs tongues) (Netherlands), zwarte pens or beuling (Belgium), blóðmör (Iceland), boudin rouge (Creole and Cajun), morcela and chouriço de sangue (Portugal), morcilla (Spain and Latin America), krvavica (Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia), prieta (Chile), rellena (Mexico, or moronga (Mexico), dồi (Vietnam), sanganel (Friuli), ragati (Nepal), mustamakkara (Finland), verivorst (Estonia) and kaszanka (Poland).

Popular Culture
In the 1970s British TV comedy series The Goodies, the episode Kung Fu Kapers centred around the martial art of Ecky-Thump which involved hitting people on the head with black puddings.

Art
Members of the group monochrom prepared blood pudding out of their own blood and ate it. The performance (staged in 2003 in Vienna) was accompanied by political essays about the 'autocannibalistic' tendencies of the global economy. The event, called "Viennese Factionism: Auto-Blood-Sausage", also can be interpreted as a critical statement about art, art history and the art market (Viennese Actionism). ORF FM4, Arte