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Pork Black Puddings, with Rice
Stir a little salt in a pint and a half of warm blood till it is cold. Add the grated crumb of half a quartern loaf, and six ounces of Carolina rice which has been boiled until tender in a quart of milk. Mix thoroughly, add the seasoning mentioned in the preceding recipe, with three ounces of the inward fat of the pig cut into dice, one pound of finely-shredded beef suet, and four well-beaten eggs. Half fill the skins, boil, hang, and serve as before; these puddings are very good when they are lightly broiled instead of being fried. Time to boil, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A Victorian blood pudding stretched with rice and bread, made in the sequence every black pudding follows: mix cold, fill loosely, poach gently, cool, then slice and fry or grill. Two things matter more than any measurement — the blood must be fresh and food-grade, and the skins must never be filled more than halfway.
- Sourcing the bloodA pint and a half is about 3.5 US cups (an Imperial pint is 20 fl oz). Pig's blood must come from a licensed butcher or abattoir, ordered fresh and kept refrigerated; it is highly perishable. Stirring the salted blood as it cools is done to keep it liquid rather than to season it — left unstirred it sets into clots that will not mix.
- Why the skins are half filledThe rice and bread swell as the puddings poach. A tightly stuffed casing splits and the filling boils out into the water. Use wide hog casings (38-42 mm), tie in short links, and prick each one once with a needle before it goes in.
- Poach, do not boilDespite "boil," hold the water at 175-180F. A rolling boil bursts the skins. Fifteen minutes suits small, half-filled links; go by internal temperature rather than the clock, and pull them when the centre reaches 160F and a skewer comes out clean rather than bloody.
- "Hang" means chillThe Victorian larder was cold and draughty; a modern kitchen is not. Cool the puddings quickly in cold water, then refrigerate and use within two or three days, or freeze. Do not hang cooked blood pudding at room temperature.
- A quartern loafA quartern loaf was baked from a quarter peck of flour and weighed roughly 4 lb, so half of one is about 2 lb of bread — perhaps 1.25 to 1.5 lb of crumb once the crust is discarded. The figure is genuinely imprecise; judge by consistency, aiming for a mixture that just falls from the spoon.
- Carolina riceA long-grain American rice, the standard fine rice of nineteenth-century British kitchens. Any long-grain white rice works. Six ounces boiled soft in a quart of milk gives a loose, porridge-like mass; let it cool completely before it meets the blood.
- Inward fat and suet"Inward fat of the pig" is leaf or flare fat from around the kidneys, the same fat rendered for leaf lard; diced back fat is the practical substitute. A pound of shredded beef suet is a great deal by modern taste and can be cut back, but some hard fat is structural — without it the pudding sets dense and dry.
- The missing seasoningThe "preceding recipe" is not on this page. Victorian seasonings for pork black pudding commonly ran to salt, black pepper, mace or allspice, dried herbs such as thyme and marjoram, and sometimes onion softened in fat first — but the actual mixture intended here is unknown.
- FinishingSlice about half an inch thick and grill or pan-fry until crisped on both sides, which is all the reheating a cooked pudding needs. Cassell's yield of eight or nine servings is about right for this quantity as a breakfast dish.
Blood pudding is among the oldest forms of butchery thrift: at a domestic pig-killing nothing could be wasted, and blood keeps only a very short time, so it was caught, salted to keep it liquid, and turned into sausage quickly. British versions were often bulked with oatmeal or barley in the north; this one uses bread and rice instead, which may suggest a town kitchen buying imported Carolina rice rather than working from a farm store cupboard. The recipe sits in a run of black pudding variants that lean on each other for seasoning, so that the reader is expected to look back a recipe or two. The costing in shillings and pence, and the confident "sufficient for eight or nine persons," suggest a book written for a household with a cook and an account to justify.