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Pork Black Puddings

Pork black puddings are blood-based sausages made with groats, bread, suet, spices, and eggs, then boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Winter savory and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pork Black Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the casing

  1. Wash and scrape hog intestines, turn them inside out, and soak them in saltwater overnight.

  2. Rinse the intestines in fresh cold water the next day.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix warm blood with coarse sea salt until cold.

  2. Add soaked groats and soaked bread to the blood mixture and mix thoroughly.

  3. Combine winter savory, thyme, onion, pennyroyal, salt, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger; stir into the mixture.

  4. Add chopped beef suet and beaten eggs to the mixture and combine well.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill the prepared intestines halfway with the mixture, adding pieces of inward fat at regular intervals.

  2. Tie the ends securely and boil in water for 5 minutes.

  3. Prick the puddings to release air, return to boiling water, and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

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. Winter savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Winter savory + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Winter savory + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together690 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Warm blood
Provides the liquid base and sets with heat to form the pudding's firm body.
Whole groats
Adds bulk and a chewy, starchy texture to the filling.
Bread
Soaked in hot milk, it adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the filling together and help it set when cooked.
Pig inward fat
Pieces melt during cooking, leaving pockets of richness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Pricking the puddings before the simmer. Air trapped inside the casing expands as it heats and can burst the intestine. Pricking lets the air escape so the puddings stay intact during the 30-minute simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, winter savory, thyme, pepper, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, winter savory, thyme, pepper, clove, nutmeg. 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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