black pudding
black pudding, a sausage incorporating blood, popular in the British Isles and typically eaten as a breakfast food.
Black pudding has been a recorded item of British cuisine since at least the 1400s, although it is certainly far older. The Odyssey of Homer mentions a sausage “filled with fat and blood.” The ancient Romans ate a version of it, and Spanish and French counterparts exist (as morcilla and boudin noir, respectively).
Black pudding finds a place among the full breakfasts that are typical of the British Isles, alongside fried toast, eggs, baked beans, bacon, tomato slices, and other food items. It is usually made of pig’s blood, onions, and various spices and herbs such as nutmeg, ginger, and mace, all bound together with barley or, more commonly, oatmeal and then stuffed into tripe skins. The sausages are then boiled or baked, grilled or fried. In some regional variations cow’s blood or sheep’s blood is used, and some regional recipes call for suet (the hard fat around the kidneys and loins of cattle, sheep, and horses). The result is a dry sausage that is usually eaten in slices or crumbled on or in other dishes. It can be used in ice cream, the sausage bits resembling chocolate chips, or added to dishes such as bubble and squeak and mashed potatoes and gravy. When used in the creation of a Scotch egg, the result has been called a “Manchester egg,” where the novelty originated. The blood, combined with the spices, lends the sausage a flavour that is slightly sweet, a touch metallic, and spicy all at once.
Black pudding became the subject of some controversy during the years of the Reformation and the rise of various Protestant religious movements. In 1652 Thomas Barlow, who later became an Anglican bishop of Lincoln, England, pronounced that because Hebrew dietary law prohibits the consumption of blood, Christians should follow suit; Methodists in particular shunned it for the same reason. Black pudding figures elsewhere in British history in a perhaps apocryphal tale: it is said that in a battle near Manchester during the Wars of the Roses, the contending forces, out of ammunition, threw black puddings at each other. This event is commemorated today in the annual World Black Pudding Throwing Championships in the town of Ramsbottom.
Black pudding is considered a generally healthful dish in moderation; blood provides useful quantities of zinc and iron, yet the dish can contain high levels of sodium and fat. Before her brief term as prime minister, Liz Truss, then the environment minister, listed black pudding among other “must-eat” British foods. For all that, many Britons, especially younger ones, exclude it from their diets.