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Black Pudding: A Classic Christmas Recipe

Posted on 12/13/201003/20/2011 by Backpacking Dad

A few years ago my friend Alexei gifted me a first edition of the translated Larousse Gastronomique, the French cooking bible by Prosper Montagné. Alexei was a professional chef for a while, as well as working on a fig farm in the South of France, and it embarrassed him that one of his friends (me) once thought putting cinnamon on tilapia was a good idea. I’ve gotten better.

I read a few pages of it every once in a while, and although the cooking instructions offered are excellent (if a little inexact for someone like me who would like to know what temperature to set the oven at (not really an oversight of the author, really, since it was written before ovens had temperature dials)) it is the anecdotes, stories, and historical revelations woven throughout that make this book priceless.

I was trying to learn how to roast a pork tenderloin last night (something I “know” how to do but still, I thought I’d see if the Larousse had any insight, which it did: salt, bay leaf, and powdered thyme as a rub for a few hours before cooking) when I saw the entry for Black Pudding.

Here’s what Prosper has to say about Black Pudding:

“A large sausage made of pig’s blood and suet enclosed in an intestine.

According to some historians, black pudding, as we know it today, is one of the few Assyrian dishes which have come down to us still greatly resembling those made by the pork butchers of Tyre, who, it is said, excelled in this type of preparation.”

Propser goes on to say that black pudding is a traditional French Christmas dish, served after the Christmas midnight mass.

Before going on to provide some variations on recipes for black pudding, Prosper offers his reader the delight of a recipe in poem form, quoting “cook and poet” Achille Ozanne:

“Préparez des oignons, hachés menus, menus,

Qu’avec autant de lard sur un feu doux l’on passe,

Les tournant tant, qu’ils soient d’un beau blond devenus,

Et que leur doux arome envahisse l’espace…

Mêlez le tout au sang, puis, bien assaisonnez,

De sel, poivre et muscade, ainsi que des épices;

Un verre de Cognac; après: vous entonnez

Dans les boyaux de porc, dont l’un des orifices

Est d’avance fermé, et dès qu’ils sont remplis,

Ficelez l’autre bout, et dans l’eau frémissante

Plongez touse les boudins! Ces travaux accomplis,

Egouttez-les après vingt minutes d’attente.”

The Larousse translators offer the following English version of Mssr. Ozanne’s recipe-in-poem:

“Chop the onions, finely, finely,

Toss them in an equal amount of fat on a low fire,

Stirring them, until they are a beautiful golden colour,

And their fragrance pervades all round…

Blend them with blood then season well with

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, and the spices;

A glass of brandy and then you stuff the mixture

Into a pig’s intestine, one end of which

Has previously been sealed. As soon as this is filled,

Tie up the other end and into simmering water

Plunge the black pudding! Once this is done,

You give them twenty minutes, and drain.”

The translation makes me laugh.

But look at how simple the instructions are! Cook some minced onions, mix in the blood, add some spices, add some brandy, stuff into a pig intestine and then boil! That’s so simple! (Also, look at how short my poem would have been. I am not a poet cook.)

So, who is going to be enjoying some Black Pudding this Christmas?

 

You know you want to. It’s for Jesus.

10 thoughts on “Black Pudding: A Classic Christmas Recipe”

  1. Karen6460 says:
    12/13/2010 at 5:26 PM

    I am French and I can assure you we never had "Black pudding" after midnight mass. It looks like blood sausage which is English.

    1. Backpacking Dad says:
      12/13/2010 at 5:32 PM

      It is blood sausage. The listing in the Larousse calls it a boudin, which is

      definitely French: boudin noir.

  2. Winn says:
    12/13/2010 at 8:08 PM

    That. Is. Gross. But culturally enlightening, so thanks for that. I'll pass this year on this particular delicacy.

    1. Backpacking Dad says:
      12/13/2010 at 8:39 PM

      It's totally delicious.

  3. Crabby Mommy says:
    12/13/2010 at 9:23 PM

    I have eaten some unusual dishes, but i would not touch that thing. Unless I had a shot of tequila… or ten shots of tequila. Yup, maybe with ten shots. Maybe.

    1. Backpacking Dad says:
      12/13/2010 at 9:51 PM

      Once you go black pudding….

  4. ChopperPapa says:
    12/14/2010 at 3:17 PM

    That is straight. up. nasty…I think I'll go hurl now.

    And people make fun of us rednecks for eating mountain oysters.

  5. fadkog says:
    12/14/2010 at 3:47 PM

    Not even if it was made with the blood of Jesus. And I'm Christian, so I already feel bad enough about that business. Or maybe it's because they give us tiny cups of grape juice during communion, telling us that it's the blood of Christ, and I'm sort of still thirsty afterward. I don't know. Either way, I do know I wouldn't eat that entrail of horror.

  6. Jacob says:
    12/17/2010 at 8:02 AM

    So do you drink the brandy or pour it in the pan? The translated poem is unclear, but given what’s in black pudding, I’m going with drinking the brandy. Otherwise, who would come up with this stuff.

  7. Suburban Kamikaze says:
    12/17/2010 at 11:36 AM

    We're going to need a lot more brandy.

    SK

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