Skip to main content
Main

Black Puddings

A blood sausage made with hog blood, grits, spices, herbs, and hog gut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Black Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling base

  1. Boil grits in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the grits and place them in a large pan.

  3. Kill the hog.

  4. Save 2 quarts of blood, stirring until cold.

  5. Mix the blood with the grits. Stir the mixture well and mix thoroughly.

Season and prepare the casing

  1. Season the mixture with salt, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Add chopped herbs to the mixture.

  3. Season and flavor the mixture.

  4. Dice the hog leaf.

  5. Clean the hog gut.

Fill, boil and cool

  1. Tie one end of the gut.

  2. Fill the gut with the mixture, adding fat as you go.

  3. Fill the skins three-quarters full.

  4. Tie the other end of the gut.

  5. Prick the gut with a pin.

  6. Boil the filled gut in a kettle of water for 1 hour.

  7. Lay the boiled gut on clean straw to cool.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Winter savory + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Hog's blood
Sets as it cooks and binds the filling into a firm, sliceable mass.
Grits
Absorbs liquid and thickens the blood, giving the filling body and structure.
Fat from the hog
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling from drying out as it cooks.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Prick the gut with a pin. Pricking lets steam and expanding air escape while the filled gut boils, which helps prevent the casing from bursting. Skipping it risks splitting the casing and losing filling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, nutmeg, winter savory, marjoram, thyme. 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.

More black pudding recipes

Irish 6French 3 See all 71 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes