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BLACK PUDDINGS (Scotch method)
Take one quart of bullock's or sheep's blood, and mix with it half a pound of oatmeal. Add half a pound of finely minced suet, salt, a table-spoonful of white pepper, a tea-spoonful of black pepper, and a tea-spoonful of powdered mint. Warm half a pint of skimmed milk, add and mix thoroughly; turn the sausage skins inside out, and wash them well in warm water and salt; then rinse them well in cold water, and fill three parts full with the mixture. Tie the two ends together; put them in hot water, and boil slowly for twenty minutes. While they are boiling, prick with a pin to let the air escape. Lay them on a cloth to dry, and hang up for use. To warm, lay them in boiling water in a deep saucepan, and then toast before the fire or on a gridiron. Probable cost, 4d. per pound.
A working Scots blood pudding: blood, oatmeal, suet and seasoning, poached in skins. Everything in it is still obtainable, but two things in the original need rethinking — where the blood comes from, and what happens after the twenty minutes are up.
- The hinge: poach, do not boil"Boil slowly" is best read as water held at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil; modern practice for blood puddings is to keep it well below boiling, in the region of 175-180F. Blood sets like a custard; at a hard boil the filling expands, the skins split and you lose the lot into the pan. Pricking with a pin, as the recipe says, releases trapped air and steam and is the other half of the same insurance.
- Sourcing the bloodAn imperial quart is about 1.1 litres. Fresh food-grade blood comes from a licensed abattoir or a halal or specialist butcher, usually ordered in advance; in some countries, including much of the United States, blood for human consumption is tightly restricted or simply not sold retail. It must be fresh, kept cold, and strained through muslin to remove clots and fibrin before use.
- OatmealScottish black puddings use pinhead or medium oatmeal, not rolled oats, and the oatmeal is often lightly toasted for flavour. Letting the mixture stand 20-30 minutes before filling gives the grain a start on swelling; that swelling is part of the reason the skins go only three-parts full.
- SuetHalf a pound of beef suet, minced or hand-chopped small, not packaged shredded suet with its flour coating. Ask a butcher for fresh kidney suet and chill it hard before chopping so it stays in distinct pieces rather than smearing.
- SkinsNatural hog casings or beef runners, sold packed in salt, are the modern equivalent. They come cleaned, so the turning-inside-out step is unnecessary; soak in warm water, rinse, and run water through the length of each one to check for holes.
- Cook to a temperatureTwenty minutes suits a modest-diameter skin. Judge by an instant-read thermometer instead: the centre should reach 160F, at which point a skewer comes out clean rather than bloody. Thicker beef runners will need longer.
- Do not hang them upThis is cooked, low-acid meat, salted for flavour only and with no cure in it, and the Victorian larder it was written for was cold and draughty. Chill the puddings quickly and refrigerate for no more than three or four days, or freeze. Reheating by simmering then toasting on a gridiron is still the right treatment.
- Yield and costThe quantities make something over 4 lb of pudding, enough for a dozen or so servings sliced and fried. "4d. per pound" is fourpence in pre-decimal currency, a marker of how cheap blood and oatmeal were relative to muscle meat.
Black pudding survives across northern Europe wherever a household killed its own beast and could not afford to waste the blood; the Scottish version is usually distinguished from the English by its oatmeal, while Lancashire and Midlands puddings tend towards pearl barley and more onion (Lancashire recipes often use both grains). In Gaelic-speaking Scotland the equivalent is marag dhubh, and the Hebridean tradition around Stornoway is the one that has kept the best modern reputation. This is slaughter-day economy, a way of converting a quart of something otherwise thrown away into several pounds of food at fourpence a pound, written for readers who still expected to deal with a whole carcass rather than a butcher's parcel.