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Puddings

A blood pudding made with pig's blood, endive, spices, and optional bread or rice, cooked in skins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the endive.

  2. Chop the boiled endive finely.

  3. Add the chopped endive to fried onions.

  4. Season the mixture with salt, white pepper, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, and nutmeg.

  5. Add the warm pig's blood and mix well.

  6. If the mixture is too thin, add stale bread crumbs or boiled rice.

Fill and cook

  1. Clean and wash the pudding skins in salt water.

  2. Tie one end of a skin to a tin funnel and fill with the mixture, pricking to release air.

  3. Tie the other end of the skin and place it in boiling salted water.

  4. Simmer for 20 minutes, pricking to prevent bursting.

  5. Let the cooked skins cool on a sieve overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the skins into 4 to 6-inch pieces, wipe with olive oil, and broil for 10 minutes before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  5. Endive + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pig's blood
Sets when cooked, binding the filling into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and adds body, firming a mixture that is too thin.
Endive
Adds bulk and a slightly bitter vegetable note that balances the rich blood.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to thicken a loose filling.
Olive oil
Adds fat that helps the cooked skins brown and crisp under the broiler.

The step that matters

Pricking the skins while simmering. Steam and air expand inside the filling as it heats. Without pricking to release them, the skin can burst, so the pudding should be pierced gently during the simmer.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (endive, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, bread, rice, olive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, bread, rice, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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