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Puddings

A blood pudding made with endive, fresh blood, spices, and stale bread crumbs, cooked in skins and broiled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 with coarse sea salt, white pepper, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Add the fresh pig's blood. Mix well.

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

Fill and simmer

  1. Wash the pudding skins in salt water.

  2. Tie one end of each skin to a tin funnel.

  3. Fill the skins with the mixture. Prick the skins with a pin to release air.

  4. Tie the other end of each skin securely.

  5. Place the filled skins in a large pan of boiling salted water. Simmer for 20 minutes. Prick the skins to prevent bursting.

  6. Remove the skins from the pan. Let them rest on a sieve overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the skins into 4-6 inch pieces.

  2. Wipe the pieces with olive oil. Broil the pieces for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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

Fresh pig's blood
Sets when heated, binding the filling into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Endive
Adds bulk and moisture, giving the filling body and a slightly bitter note.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture so it holds its shape.
Onions (in the method)
Add sweetness and savoury depth when fried before mixing.
Thyme
Contributes aromatic, herbal flavour that balances the rich blood.

The step that matters

Prick the skins while simmering. Air and steam expand inside the casing as it heats. Pricking releases pressure, so the skins do not burst and the filling stays intact.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, bread, 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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