Why it works: Barley and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Black Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Save the pig's blood and stir in a little coarse sea salt to prevent it from thickening.
Clean the pig's skins by turning them inside out and scraping with a knife, then wash them in salt water.
Make the filling
Boil pearl barley for 2–3 hours, then mix it with the blood, oatmeal, pepper, salt, and herbs.
Add the diced back fat to the mixture.
Fill and cook
Use a tin funnel to fill the prepared skins with the mixture, ensuring some back fat is included in each.
Tie the ends of the filled skins tightly to form rings.
Simmer the rings in boiling water with a small piece of washing soda for 30 minutes.
To check if they are done, prick with a needle; if blood comes out, they need more cooking; if fat oozes out, they are cooked.
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.
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Barley + peppertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together897 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pig's blood
- Forms the dark body of the pudding and sets to bind the filling when cooked.
- Oatmeal
- Absorbs liquid and adds bulk, giving the filling a firmer, crumbly texture.
- Pearl barley
- Adds chewy texture and bulk to the filling after long boiling.
- Back fat
- Adds richness and moisture, and forms pockets of fat that stay soft within the set filling.
The step that matters
Checking doneness with a needle. Blood still coming out means the blood has not set, so the rings need more cooking. Fat oozing out shows the filling has set and the pudding is cooked.
“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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