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Hog, or Black Puddings
Throw a little salt into the blood as soon as it is drawn, stir it well, and, when cold, strain. Mix with it a third of its measure in milk, or good stock, and stir into it two-thirds of finely-shredded beef suet to one-third of dried oat-meal, until it is a stiff batter. Add pepper, salt, and finely-chopped onions, and, if liked, a little parsley, marjoram, or winter savoury. Cleanse the skins thoroughly. Cut them into equal lengths, and fill them with the mixture. Sew them securely. Put them into boiling water, and boil them gently, pricking them as they swell with a large darning-needle, to let out the air. Hang them in a dry place until wanted. Time, one hour to boil.
A working blood-sausage formula of the pig-killing season, written for a household that had a freshly slaughtered animal in the yard. Everything hinges on the blood: it must be food-grade, stirred from the moment it is drawn, and cooked below a simmer.
- Sourcing the bloodFresh pig's blood is a regulated product in most places; buy it frozen or chilled from a licensed butcher or abattoir rather than collecting it yourself. The recipe specifies no quantities, so scale everything to the blood you have.
- Why the salt goes in immediatelySalting and stirring keeps the blood from clotting; the straining afterwards removes the fibrin strings that form anyway. Skip either step and the finished pudding is gritty with clots.
- The proportions, read carefullyThe suet and oatmeal are two-thirds to one-third of each other, by volume, and together they are stirred into the blood-and-milk mixture until it is a stiff batter — the total quantity is judged by texture, not weighed.
- Dried oatmealThis means pinhead or coarse-cut oatmeal, dried in a low oven until it smells nutty, not rolled oats and certainly not oat flour. It swells during boiling and is what keeps the pudding sliceable.
- SkinsHog casings today come packed in salt. Rinse, then soak in cool water for at least half an hour and flush the insides before filling. Fill loosely — two-thirds full at most — because the oatmeal expands and a tight pudding splits.
- Winter savouryWinter savory, a peppery Mediterranean herb still sold dried. Marjoram or thyme stands in without complaint.
- "Boil them gently" means do not boilHold the water at 80–85C (175–185F), barely trembling. A rolling boil bursts the casings and squeezes the fat out, leaving a hollow, greasy pudding. Prick any that balloon, as directed.
- Time and donenessOne hour suits a pudding of moderate thickness; thinner ones will need less. Test with a skewer — the juices should run clear rather than red, and the centre should reach 70C (160F).
- Storage, not as writtenAn uncured cooked blood pudding is highly perishable and should not be hung in a dry place. Cool it quickly in cold water, then refrigerate for up to three days or freeze. Serve sliced thickly and fried in a little dripping until crusted.
Blood puddings are among the oldest sausages in Europe — a way of using the one part of the pig that will not keep even a day — and versions turn up from Spanish morcilla to French boudin noir to the oatmeal-bound puddings of northern England and Scotland. The oatmeal here marks this as a British recipe: where the French often thicken with onion and cream and the Spanish frequently with rice, Lancashire and the Scottish border used the local grain. The recipe reflects a household economy in which the autumn pig-killing produced a single day's flood of perishable material and a cook was expected to know what to do with all of it, blood included. The instruction to hang the finished puddings in a dry place belongs to that world of cold larders and quick eating rather than to ours.