A large sausage made of blood and suet, sometimes with flour or oatmeal. English black pudding sausages, or blood pudding, have two distinct forms, the 'Bury' looped sausage ring, and the 'Southern' stick form, both of which are made with or without minced fat. There is also a baked tray black pudding found in North Yorkshire and the far North of England, which is not a sausage. The name is known, as "Blak podyngs" at least since about 1450 (OED)

Traditionally (in the Black Country and Lancashire) the pudding is boiled and served as a meal in itself, with bread or potato; elsewhere in England (as in Scotland, Ireland, Canada, etc.), it is typically served sliced and grilled as part of a cooked breakfast.


Black Pudding seller at Bury market (source unknown)



Bury Black Puddings
Image: www.buryblackpuddings.co.uk



Stick Black Puddings
Image: www.buryblackpuddings.co.uk


The Southern, or 'stick' form is a sausage of pig's blood with fine oatmeal, minced pork fat and spices forced in c2in diameter skins, made into straight lengths and boiled. There is also a Baked Black Pudding

Early forms of black pudding commonly included milk:

Original Receipt in 'The Accomplisht Cook' by Robert May, 1660 (Robert May 1660);

To make blood Puddings
Take the blood of a hog, while it is warm, and steep in it a quart or more of great oatmeal groats, at the end of three days take the groats out and drain them clean; then put to these groats more then a quart of the best cream warmed on the fire; then take some mother of time, spinage, parsley, savory, endive, sweet marjoram, sorrel, strawberry leaves, succory, of each a few chopped very small and mix them with the groats, with a little fennel seed finely beaten, some peper, cloves, mace salt, and some beef-suet, or flakes of the hog cut small. Otherways, you may steep your oatmeal in warm mutton broth, or scalding milk, or boil it in a bag.


Original Receipt from 'A Shilling Cookery for The People' by Alexis Soyer (Soyer 1845)

37. Black Puddings, broiled. Make about six or eight incisions through the skin with a knife, in a slanting way, on each side of the pudding; put it on the gridiron for about eight minutes, on rather a brisk fire, turn it four times in that space of time, and serve it broiling hot.

I should recommend those who are fond of black puddings to partake of no other beverage than tea or coffee, as cocoa or chocolate would be a clog to the stomach. In France they partake of white wine for breakfast, which accounts for the great consumption of black pudding. Now really this is a very favorite dish with epicures, but I never should recommend it to a delicate stomach.