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Dessert

French Black Puddings

A blood pudding made with grits or rice, pig's blood, spices, cream, and soaked bread, stuffed into entrails and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Black Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Pick, wash, and boil the grits or rice until three parts done, then drain it dry.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the drained grits or rice with the pig's blood and plenty of coarse sea salt.

  3. Add ground pepper, mace, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, cream, soaked bread crumb, and chopped herbs.

  4. Mix the ingredients over a slow fire for 20 minutes, then let cool.

Fill and poach

  1. Fill the cleaned entrails with the mixture three parts full and tie the ends.

  2. Boil the puddings gently in hot water for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. If eating immediately, prick them with a fork and broil on a clean grill for 10 minutes.

  2. If not eating right away, place them on clean raw and simmer in boiling water for 10 minutes before broiling.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Grits or rice
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives it a firm, sliceable body.
Pig's blood
Coagulates when heated, helping the filling set and bind together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays soft rather than dry.
French bread crumb
Soaked in cream, it holds moisture and helps bind the filling.

The step that matters

Fill the entrails three parts full. The grits or rice swell and the filling expands while the puddings cook. Overfilling can split the casing, so leaving room lets the mixture expand safely.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, pepper, clove, nutmeg, allspice, cream, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, clove, nutmeg, allspice, cream, bread. 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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