Skip to main content
Main

Black Puddings

A blood sausage made from grits, hog blood, spices, herbs, and fat, boiled in hog leaf casings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Boil the grits in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the grits into a clean tub or large pan.

  3. Kill the hog.

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

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the cold blood with the grits and stir well.

  2. Season the mixture with salt and the spices.

  3. Add finely chopped herbs to taste.

  4. Cut the hog leaf into dice.

Fill the casings

  1. Clean the guts thoroughly.

  2. Tie one end of the guts.

  3. Fill the guts with the mixture, adding fat as you go.

  4. Tie the other end.

  5. Prick the puddings with a pin.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the puddings in boiling water.

  2. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the puddings and lay them on clean straw.

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

Grits
Forms the bulk and firm body of the pudding as it cooks.
Hog's blood
Sets when heated, binding the grits into a sliceable mass.
Fat
Adds moisture and richness so the pudding does not dry out.
Cloves, mace, and nutmeg
Provide warm, aromatic flavour that runs through the whole pudding.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 1 hour. A hard, rolling boil can swell and burst the casings and push fat out. Gentle heat lets the blood and grits set evenly without toughening or splitting.

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