Black Pudding

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Image:Morcilla cocida.jpg Black pudding, blood sausage or blood pudding is a sausage made by cooking animal blood with meat, fat or other filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. In the West, pig or cattle blood is most often used, sheep and goat blood are used to a lesser extent, while blood from poultry is very seldom used. 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...

1 Variants
2 Other uses
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Variants

The US term "blood sausage" is a variant. In Great Britain, Australia, Ireland, Atlantic Canada, New Zealand and Guyana it is called black pudding. The pudding is credited as first served in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis.^{[citation needed]} The ingredients include pig's blood, suet, bread, barley and oatmeal. Black pudding is usually served as part of a traditional full Irish, full English, full Welsh and full Scottish breakfasts. The further addition of the similar white pudding is an important feature of the traditional Irish breakfast. The Lancashire town of Bury is noted for its black pudding, as is the County Cork town of Clonakilty, which exports black pudding as a delicacy item. Black and white pudding, as well as a third variant – red pudding – are served battered at chip shops in Scotland as an alternative to fish and chips.

Black pudding for breakfast, served with square sausage, baked beans, fried bread and mushrooms

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, see Eschweiler. Similarly Czech jelito made from pork, pig's blood and groats; the stuffing served by itself, unformed is called prejt. Another German variant is Zungenwurst, which is blutwurst mixed with pieces of pickled pig's tongue.

Other varieties of blood sausage include blodpølse (Norway), boudin noir (France), tongeworst (with added pigs tongues) (Netherlands), "blóðmör" (Iceland), boudin rouge (Creole and Cajun), morcela and chouriço de sangue (Portugal), morcilla (Spain and Latin America), krvavica (Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia), prieta (Chile), rellena (Mexico, Colombia) or moronga (Mexico), dồi (Vietnam), sanganel (Friuli), mustamakkara (Finland) and verivorst (Estonia). In Eastern Europe, kishka is made with pig's blood and buckwheat kasha, it is also known in Russia as krovianka (кровянка) and Poland as kaszanka. In Hungary, véres hurka is made with rice, pig's blood and pork. In Taiwan, ti-hoeh-koé ("pig blood cake") is made of pork blood and sticky rice and fried or steamed for snack or used for hot pot. No animal casing is used. In Puerto Rico, the morcilla is also made with the pig's blood and rice, but it is always fried. A similar dish from the Philippines, dinuguan, from the word dugo or blood, is a stew consisting of diced beef or pork with pig's or cow's blood; in Philippine English, it is referred to as "chocolate pudding". In China, "blood tofu" (Chinese: 血豆腐; pinyin: xuě dòufǔ), is most often made with pig's or duck's blood, although chicken's or cow's blood may also be used. In Sweden it's called blodpudding (blood pudding), but there are also varieties and similarities such as blodkorv (blood sausage), blodplättar (blood pancakes) and palt. 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. A local Italian version of this sausage in the San Francisco Bay area is called "Biroldo", which uses pine nuts, raisins, spices, pig snouts and either pig 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 Guyana, South America (West Indies) black pudding is also made, and probably originated from Great Britain during the colonial period. Like the Cajun Boudin, the main ingredient is cooked rice seasoned with traditional West Indian herbs (thyme, basil etc.). The rice is mixed with cow's blood, then stuffed into pig casing (intestine), then boiled in a large pot until firm. It is served as an appetiser or snack. It is often served with a spicy yellow sauce.

In Suriname, South America, black pudding is also known under the Dutch name 'bloedworst', and white pudding under the (also Dutch) name 'vleesworst'.

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

[edit] Other uses

In the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, Black pudding is also the name of a species of ooze. This creature is a mobile but mindless blob of black jelly which attacks and eats with corrosive acid. If struck with a bladed weapon, it divides into two smaller but fully active entities.

In one episode of the popular BBC television programme The Goodies large black puddings were used as martial arts weapons.