Black pudding

• 1. Introduction

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  Black pudding is a blood sausage from the United Kingdom and Ireland, and one 15th-century English recipe for it called for the blood of a porpoise. That version was eaten exclusively by the nobility. Today the dish belongs to far more ordinary tables. So how did a food made from blood end up as a regional favourite? What goes into it, and what sets it apart from the blood sausages of the Continent? Why did people make it at all? And why do whole towns argue over who made it first?

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• 2. Blood, Fat and Grain

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  Pork blood, pork fat and a cereal, usually oatmeal, oat groats or barley groats, form the usual core of a black pudding. Beef blood and beef suet are occasional substitutes. A high share of cereal marks the pudding out from other blood sausages, as do herbs such as pennyroyal.

  Traditional recipes from the United Kingdom follow a simple routine. Cooks stir the fresh blood, add fat and some form of rusk, season the mixture, fill a casing and boil it. Beef intestine was once the natural casing. Modern commercial puddings use synthetic cellulose skins and are usually made from imported dried blood.

  The short ingredient list, with oats or barley thickening the blood and soaking it up, is typical of British and Irish versions. Continental blood sausages do it differently. Yet black pudding still varies more from region to region than other sausages, and many butchers guard a recipe of their own. Breadcrumbs or flour sometimes join the oats or barley, and the amount and texture of the fat can differ widely.

  Seasoning adds another layer of difference. Marjoram, thyme and mint are traditional flavourings, and cumin, rue and parsley turn up in some recipes. In the North Riding of Yorkshire, pennyroyal went by the local name pudding-yerb, because it was so closely tied to the pudding pot.

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• 3. Old Name, Older Habit

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  Around 1450, the dish was written down as blak podyngs, so the name has been in use for centuries. The word pudding itself comes from French, which took it from Latin, where it meant a small sausage. Local speech added its own labels. In Somerset the dish was called black pot, and elsewhere it was known as bloody pot.

  Black puddings are often counted among the oldest forms of sausage, and the reason is practical. Animals are generally bled at slaughter, and blood spoils fast unless it is prepared somehow. Turning it into a pudding was one of the easiest ways to stop it going to waste.

  Pork is now the usual source, but that was not always so. Sheep or cow blood was also used. Until at least the 19th century, cow or sheep blood was the normal base in Scotland. Jamieson's Scottish dictionary defined black pudding as "a pudding made of the blood of a cow or sheep".

  The calendar mattered too. Because the pudding came out of the slaughtering season, eating it was historically linked to Martinmas, when the yearly slaughter of livestock took place.

  By the 19th century, makers of black pudding were tied to towns with big pork markets, such as Stretford, then in Lancashire, and Cork in Ireland. City cooks no longer had home-killed pork, so recipe books written for urban housewives generally left puddings out. Scottish cookbooks kept printing recipes into the 20th century.

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• 4. Regional Pride

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  On the Western Isles of Scotland, the Stornoway black pudding has been granted protected geographical status. Stornoway is regarded as a particular home of the delicacy, alongside Lancashire. More broadly, in the United Kingdom the pudding is especially tied to the Black Country, the North West and Scotland.

  That Stornoway designation set off a scramble in Bury, where black pudding is traditionally boiled and handed over in paper wrapping, served with malt vinegar. After the Scottish award, Bury butchers sought to prove how long they had been making and selling the product. One claim reaches back to 1810.

  Yorkshire had its own tradition. Its puddings were flavoured with lemon thyme and savory, and those from Barnsley were especially well known.

  The pudding also travelled. Immigrants brought it to the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, where it is now part of the local cuisine.

  Ireland has a distinct variety of its own, called drisheen, closely associated with Cork. It is usually made from cow's blood, though sheep blood was often used until recently, and tansy sometimes flavoured it. In County Kerry, Sneem Black Pudding is a local version that holds Protected Geographical Indication status.

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• 5. On the Plate

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  In parts of north-western England and the Black Country, a whole black pudding was boiled and served as a complete meal, with bread or potatoes. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom and Ireland, slices are more often fried or grilled as part of a traditional full breakfast. British and Irish emigrants carried that breakfast habit around the world.

  The pudding can also be baked, or boiled in its skin. Because it is cooked during production, it can be eaten cold. Some chip shops, particularly in Scotland and Northern England, sell it deep-fried in batter.

  Modern cooks have found new uses. One novelty is black pudding ice cream. A more conventional pairing is scallops. Scotch eggs made with black pudding, including the "Manchester egg", have become common.

  Nutrition gives the dish a mixed reputation. It is a good source of protein, low in carbohydrates and high in zinc and iron, and it has been called a "superfood" on those grounds. Many recipes, though, are also very high in saturated fat and salt.

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• 6. Throwing Puddings

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  Every September in Ramsbottom, in Bury, Greater Manchester, people hurl black puddings at piles of Yorkshire puddings. This is the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships, held annually since the 1980s. The humorous contest plays on the old rivalry between Lancashire and Yorkshire, and it draws thousands of competitors and spectators.

  Other towns have celebrated the food in gentler ways. Bacup, in Lancashire, has held the Bacup Food and Black Pudding Festival in past years.

  The pudding has admirers across the Channel as well. An annual European Black Pudding competition takes place in the Halles de Boudin in Mortagne-au-Perche, in Normandy, where British and Irish makers meet a long Continental tradition of blood sausage.

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