The French black pudding, “boudin”, is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Sadly, I’ll never taste it again, or anything even close.
Boudin is a typical blood sausage that dates back at least to the Middle Ages. I’ve used this picture before, but here it is again, just to remind you of the blood sausage’s origins:
Paris, 1973. It’s a freezing cold April day (don’t believe that European poetic crap about April) and instead of cooking a sustaining lunch as usual, Gégé decides to introduce me to something different! Boudin aux pommes. (Huh?) We wrap up warmly and walk along the Rue de l’Échiquier towards the Rue de Metz. It’s just down here a bit…
Here it is! Chez Julien.
Golly, it’s a shabby old building, and the restaurant itself is distinctly down-at-heel, with dowdily dressed clients, all middle-aged or older—Gérard explains these are just the working people from the quartier—but it’s all genuine Art nouveau! Great sinuous trails of flowers, hair and dresses… Greenish shades, faded but nevertheless very pretty.
Boudin aux pommes turns out to be black pudding with apple purée. Yep, Gégé’s trying to shock the innocent “Anglo-Saxonne” again. But he’s genuinely pleased when I love the combo.
French black pudding is incredibly good: not a heavy blood sausage, but relatively light in texture, juicy and very, very tasty. This one has just been simply fried and the apple purée is the same as the apple sauce your mum might make to serve with pork.
Boudin (strictly speaking boudin noir, the French also have boudin blanc) served with apples is a traditional French dish. Not a posh dish, no. But it's still a favourite and there are many recipes for it online. The apples may be puréed, as we had them so long ago, or sliced and sautéed, usually in butter. The black pudding is always lightly fried, whole.
Here’s the genuine article, translated from the recipe on a French website:
Boudin aux pommes
(Black Pudding with Apples)
“Here’s a great classic from Lyon. Black pudding and apple go very well together.”
* 4 servings of black pudding * 800 g apples
* 25 g butter * salt & pepper * Optional: mustard
1. Peel the apples, remove the cores and slice. Cook the slices in a saucepan on low heat with a little water. Crush them with a fork when cooked. To finish, you can add a small knob of butter.
2. Meanwhile, prick the black puddings in several places to stop them bursting when heated, or simply remove the skin if you prefer. Heat a little butter or oil in a frying pan. Add the black pudding and cook for about 15 minutes, turning several times. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Serve the black pudding hot with the apple purée and a little mustard if liked.
Cook’s notes: Best if served on heated plates.
You can also add a few chopped, sautéed potatoes.
–Serves 4.
Source: La Cuisine d’Annie,
https://lacuisinedannie.20minutes.fr/recette-boudin-aux-pommes-180.html
There are two French schools of thought on preparing black puddings for cooking so as they don’t burst when hot. One side, like Annie, advises you to prick the skin. The opposition says not to prick the sausage: “ne piquez pas votre boudin.” (“Boudin noir aux pommes”, CuisineAZ) So you can either, as in Annie’s alternative, skin them before cooking, or, the second school of thought, snip the ends off, thus allowing them to expand without bursting.
Years later I tried to replicate the French dish in both New Zealand and Australia, but I couldn’t find any decent black puddings. I did try a couple of supermarket offerings but they were very stodgy and stiff-textured. So I fell back on the English approach: slice it up into rounds and fry it quickly for breakfast, preferably with bacon or an egg, or if that seems like too much saturated fat and salt these days, a nice big tomato. Not bad, but it can’t compare. French-style boudin, I concluded, is unobtainable in the Antipodes.
Correction: when I say “the English approach”, I mean the traditional, or old-fashioned, English approach. Modern efforts on the foodie websites are to be avoided like the plague. Do they do it so as to produce a pretty picture? Because the tastes of asparagus and black pudding (no kidding), are not compatible! Nor, come to that, are rich-textured cooked asparagus with its distinctive taste and even richer-textured globby poached egg…
As for the Restaurant Julien— Alas, only a couple of years later a friend was in Paris, also staying in the 10e arrondissement, in the next street back from ours, and he reported that it had already gone up-market: expensive and full of trendies, no longer an eating place for the people who lived and worked in the quartier.
But it is still standing today and its Art nouveau glories are refreshed and glowing, so vive Paris! It’s now called Bouillon Julien, and the address is 16, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis.
Just as boudin was essentially a working-class dish in France, so black pudding in England was not considered posh nosh and it’s hard to find any references to it in the cookbooks written for the reading classes. I couldn’t find it in Mrs Beeton, and this earlier 19th-century writer only refers to it in a pejorative context:
“The term Gourmand or EPICURE has been strangely perverted, it has been conceived synonymous with a Glutton, ‘né pour la digestion,’ who will eat as long as he can sit, and drink longer than he can stand, nor leave his cup while he can lift it; or like the great eater of Kent whom FULLER places among his Worthies, and tells us that he did eat with ease, thirty dozens of Pigeons at one meal; at another, fourscore Rabbits and eighteen Yards of Black-Pudding, London Measure!”
(William Kitchiner (1775?-1827). The Cook’s Oracle: Containing Practical Receipts for Plain Cookery on the Most Economical Plan for Private Families ... New ed. London, Simpkin & Marshall, 1827. (First published 1817, as Apicius Redivivus, or, The Cook’s Oracle.))
In accordance with this scorn, Mr Kitchiner doesn’t give any recipes for black pudding.
The article in Wikipedia, “Black pudding”, suggests that the lack of 19th-century recipes is because the urban housewife no longer had access to fresh pigs’ blood—meaning the lack of recipes for making the puddings. But there’s a similar lack of advice on how to cook and use them, too.
By the end of the 19th century Mrs Wicken, writing for the Australian settlers, ignores black pudding, too, in The Art of Living in Australia, by Philip E. Muskett; Together With Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory Kitchen Information by Mrs. H. Wicken. (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, [1894])
Black pudding certainly existed for centuries in the British tradition and was popular especially in the north of England (according to Wikipedia’s article), but it wasn’t generally considered smart enough or significant enough to write about, apparently.
By the mid-1970s it does get a mention in Jane Grigson’s English Food. (Harmondsworth, England, Penguin, 1977; First published London, Macmillan, 1974). On the website Neil Cooks Grigson Neil Buttery, doing a Julie and Julia, cooking his way through English Food, writes:
“Ok, I know I didn’t slave over a hot bucket of pig’s blood and offal to make this stuff, but it [is] great food and the Grigson does make a point of mentioning where to buy good puddings and how they should be eaten. Bury, in Alongshore, UK is the best place to get them (and it’s where I got mine). They are made in horseshoe shapes and are not as firm as those in long sausages that you slice, which I think is very important. They are also in ‘natural casing’, i.e. intestine. You don’t eat the casing, but I think it’s much better this way – there is less waste, and I’m all up for that. People should eat more offal. … Anyway for those that are not aware, black pudding is made from pig’s blood, fat, oatmeal and herbs and spices. This mixture is then boiled in the natural casing. Jane suggests eating it fried with mashed potato, bacon, fried chopped apple and a blob of mustard.
“I’d never had white pudding before, and I had to wonder: ‘What on earth is in it?’. I mentioned it to friends, who also had no idea. It’s very similar to black pudding, but contains pork meat and suet instead of blood. It’s not as spicy as black pudding either.
“Grigson suggests eating it with bacon, so I combined the two to produce an extremely meaty tea! …”
“#34 Black Pudding: 8/10. I’d not had black pudding as a teatime meal, always as part of a full-English breakfast, and I have to say it was wonderful – the apple and mustard cut through the salty streaky bacon and soft, stodgy black pudding. Yum!
“#35 White Pudding: 7/10. Very tasty indeed! Soft in the centre and crispy on the outside. Much more subtle than black pudding, but a change to normal sausages. More please!”
Source: Neil Buttery. “#34 Black Pudding, #35 White Pudding,” Neil Cooks Grigson, March 12, 2008,
https://neilcooksgrigson.com/2008/03/12/34-black-pudding-35-white-pudding/
What do modern cooks make of black pudding in the English-speaking world? Well, in Australia, nothing. In August 2020, when I started researching modern sources for this blog post, I couldn’t find any recipes on the big Aussie website, Australia’s Best Recipes. (Aussies avoid any sort of offal—see Offal? Awful! Pigs’ Trotters.)
I fared better with the British and New Zealanders, however: possibly a demonstration that today’s New Zealand cuisine still smacks of the mother country. The New Zealand website Eat Well and the BBC’s Good Food had about a dozen recipes each. On both websites some were so trendy and up-market as to be simply silly: “Pear and black pudding crostini” or “Celeriac soup with scallops & black pudding”? Please! Black pudding doesn’t do posh well, it’s essentially peasant food.
Black puddings are still being served with apples and/or potatoes but these days the recipes may well have gone up-market. I’ve picked the ones that aren’t desperately trendy.
Here’s an extremely simple English dish, so simple that anyone might have thought of it—but Tom Kerridge actually did!
Black Pudding Mash
“Make mash extra special with diced black pudding pieces. This side dish goes perfectly with roasted pork.”
* 4 large potatoes (about 300 g), cut into large chunks
* 300 g black pudding, peeled and diced * 100 ml milk
* 100 ml double cream * 200 g unsalted butter * 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
1. Put the potatoes in a large pan, cover with water and season with salt. Bring to the boil, turn the heat down and gently simmer for 25-30 mins or until cooked through. Tip the potatoes into a colander and drain, then leave to steam for 10 mins.
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the black pudding until crispy, then drain on kitchen paper. Put the milk, double cream and butter in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
3. Pass the potatoes through a potato ricer or a mouli, back into the pan. Gradually add the hot milk and mix until you have a smooth buttery mash. Season and gently stir through the black pudding before serving.
–Serves 6.
Source: Tom Kerridge, Good Food magazine, January 2015. BBC Good Food,
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes
Next is a New Zealand recipe that gives the traditional French combination of boudin with apples and potatoes an odd twist: superfluous added fats and protein from eggs.
As I was reading a selection of recent New Zealand recipes such additions began to seem inevitable: if not eggs, then cream, crème fraîche, cheeses… And sometimes eggs with them. Oh, dear. The cafés are likewise. When I came back to NZ from 30 years in Australia in early 2020 I was disconcerted to find that eggs—poached eggs, especially—are everywhere, in every class of café, often in completely incongruous combos. Even a smoked-salmon and salad open sandwich came with a gooey poached egg perched on top. Ugh!
Yummy though this recipe looks, it’s far from good for you. Just don’t go overboard and serve it every week!
Black Pudding With Apple, Crispy Potatoes And Soft Egg
* 200 g black puddings * 8 eggs, room temperature
* 2 apples, firm * 2 potatoes, boiled * 2 tablesp olive oil
* 2 tablesp malt vinegar * salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1. Boil the potatoes. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Cut the potatoes into 1.5 cm cubes, then fry them until the edges are crisp and golden. Meanwhile, cut the black puddings into 2 cm cubes, then add to the crisp potatoes. Cook for 2-3 minutes until a brown crust has formed on the puddings. Chop the apples into pieces roughly the same size as the potatoes. If necessary, add a little more oil to the pan, then add the apple pieces and cook until they colour slightly—about 3 minutes.
2. Remove the ingredients to a warm plate covered with absorbent paper and keep them warm while you poach the eggs.
3. Eggs should be at room temperature. Bring a pan of water and the vinegar to the boil. Crack the eggs into the water, then lower the heat and cook for 3 -minutes with the water barely bubbling. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon, allowing the water to drain away. You may need to cook the eggs in batches, so keep the cooked ones warm on a plate lined with absorbent paper.
4. Divide the potato, pudding and apple mixture between each of 4 plates, then top each plate with 2 poached eggs. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
A good black pudding has a coarse texture and remains meltingly tender yet crumbles slightly when cooked. Cut the pudding into thick slices, as these will hold together better than thin ones, and always cook them in a very hot pan. Allow the pieces to form a crusty exterior, as this helps prevent the fat escaping. They are fragile, so turn them gently. Cook the potatoes and apples in the same pan to keep all the flavours together.
Note: You can finish this dish by adding potato crisps for an extra crunch. Thinly slice a potato and bake in the oven until crispy.
–Serves 4.
Source: New Zealand Listener, in Eat Well, https://www.eatwell.co.nz/
You don’t have to be mindlessly trendy to do something a little different with black pudding, and the following recipes offer hearty, peasant-style dishes that look very tasty!
You’ll see that there’s a tendency to combine the black pudding with other meats. Speaking as a boudin purist, I wouldn’t, supposing I’d managed to source a really juicy one. But the recipes are an interesting illustration of the way in which 21st-century cuisine is utilising (or perhaps bowdlerising) traditional working-class fare.
The “hotpot” is a long-time favourite English dish, a way of stewing meat slowly. You could finish this English version in the oven as suggested or do it in the slow cooker (crock pot), in which case use about 500 ml liquid and let it cook for about 6 hours.
The writer notes: “If you prefer traditional Lancashire hotpot, leave out the black pudding and the mustard.”
Lamb, Black Pudding & Mustard Hotpot
* 8 lamb chops (middle neck cutlets), excess fat trimmed
* 350 g black pudding, thickly sliced
* 900 g potatoes, peeled and very thinly sliced
* 3 carrots, thinly sliced * 2 large onions, thinly sliced
* 2 tablesp grainy mustard * 20 g pack parsley, finely chopped
* 6 sprigs of thyme, leaves only
* 700 ml/1-1/4 pints hot lamb or beef stock or a mixture of stock and water
* knob of butter, melted
* 2 tablesp groundnut or sunflower oil (or dripping)
1. Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/ gas 4. Heat half the oil in a frying pan and cook the onions for 5 mins until they are soft and just starting to turn golden. Remove and set aside. Pour the remaining oil into the pan and fry the black pudding for about 1 min on each side. Remove, drain on kitchen paper and set aside.
2. Cook the chops in the pan on a high heat so you get a good colour on the outside, but they’re not cooked, then drain off the fat. Set the chops aside.
3. Layer the ingredients in a deep ovenproof casserole, which holds everything snugly, starting with some potatoes and carrots and dotting half the mustard over each layer of black pudding. Season as you build up the layers and sprinkle the herbs throughout. You should have two layers of chops and finish with overlapping potato slices.
4. Pour the hot stock over everything, then brush the top with the melted butter. Cover and bake for 2 hrs, until everything is meltingly tender, removing the lid for the last half hour to crisp up the potatoes.
–Serves 4.
Source: Good Food magazine, March 2005, in BBC Good Food,
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes
Spanish rice? There is a strange tradition in the English-speaking world, which I at least have discerned, though I don’t know that it’s occurred to any other cookery writers, of calling any fried rice dish done in a good-sized open pan with onion and a bit of tomato “Spanish” rice. The name dates back to at least the first years of the 20th century, appearing in 1908 in 365 Foreign Dishes: A Foreign Dish for Every Day in the Year (Philadelphia, G.W. Jacobs & Co.) and in 1917 in The Khaki Kook Book, by Mary Kennedy Core ([New York], Abingdon Press). The first, a remarkably tasteless recipe, is the twin of the one Mum used to make for us in New Zealand in the late 1950s. The second is tastier, but neither of them lets a snippet of herb or spice creep in. They are both vegetarian. I have no idea where Mum got the recipe from. The name is still extant in New Zealand for a pan-fried dish, but the meaty 2022 version on The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly – Food website has dispensed with the tomatoes in favour of a frozen pea, corn and red capsicum mix.
The modern English recipe below picks up the “Spanish rice dish” idea in a baked rice casserole and adds black pudding—true, there is a Spanish version of the sausage, morcilla, but here it’s English black pudding. So is it the rice with onion, tomato (not much, though), capsicums and paprika that make it Spanish?
Arroz al Horno (Baked Rice)
“Combine pork belly, black pudding and bacon lardons in this Spanish rice dish. Meaty and filling, it feeds eight with little effort and is perfect for a cold night.”
* 375 g paella rice * 150 g black pudding, roughly chopped
* 800 g thick pork belly pork slices (8-10 slices), halved
* 100 g chunky bacon lardons * 1/2 x 400 g can white beans, drained
* 2 red capsicums, halved, deseeded & sliced
* 1 plum tomato, chopped * 1 onion, finely chopped
* 8 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
* 1.2 L chicken stock * 4 tsp smoked paprika
* 1/4 - 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes * 6 sprigs thyme or rosemary
* 2 tablesp extra virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve
* 1 lemon, juiced (optional)
1. Heat oven to 200C/180C. Heat half the oil in a deep frying or sauté pan (or shallow casserole dish) measuring around 30cm in diameter. Over a high heat, colour the pork belly slices on each side in several batches, then transfer to a bowl. Add the remaining oil to the pan and lower the heat to medium, then add the black pudding and bacon and fry all over for several mins. Remove with a slotted spoon. Fry the onion and peppers for around 10 mins until soft and pale gold, then add the tomato and cook until soft. Add the garlic, smoked paprika and chilli flakes and cook for another 2 mins, then put the pork, black pudding and bacon back in the pan. Add the beans, stock and whichever herb you're using, and bring everything to the boil.
2. Sprinkle the rice around the pork belly, pushing it underneath the stock. Let the stock come to the boil again, season well, then transfer to the oven (leave it uncovered). Cook for 20 mins without stirring, then check to see how the rice is doing. The rice should be tender and the stock absorbed. If it’s not ready, put back in the oven for another 5 mins, then check again. Taste for seasoning.
3. Squeeze lemon juice over the top and drizzle over some extra virgin olive oil just before serving, if you like.
–Serves 8.
Source: Diana Henry, Good Food magazine, November 2018, in BBC Good Food
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes
The New Zealand version adds eggs (again) and leaves the rice out in favour of potatoes, but the chorizos are definitely a Spanish touch! Er, and I have no idea what that reference to a “greasy spoon” breakfast is doing there, it’s definitely not a Kiwi expression and in fact for most of the 20th century it was impossible to buy a cooked breakfast in New Zealand—and I’m not betting it’s changed much today.
Baked Eggs With Black Pudding, Chorizos And Tomato
“Forget breakfast at the greasy spoon, this glammed up egg and black pudding meal is perfect at any time of the day.”
* 450 g black puddings * 450 g chorizo sausages
* 8 eggs * 2 large potatoes, cooked *1 red capsicum
* 330 g whole peeled tomatoes, tinned
*1 onion * 1 red chilli * 2 garlic cloves
* 1 handful coriander, chopped, plus extra to serve
* 1 pinch ground cumin * 250 ml chicken stock
* 1 tablesp vegetable oil
1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Finely chop the onion, then fry gently until soft. Seed and slice the capsicum and add to the saucepan. Cook for 3 minutes.
2. Then add the cumin and chilli (seeded and chopped). Season with salt and pepper. Smash the garlic with the side of a broad knife blade, then finely chop it and add to the saucepan. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Crush the tomatoes and add to the saucepan with their juice. Cook for 2 minutes until the mixture comes to a simmer. Add the stock and cook until the sauce has thickened - about 15 minutes.
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the coriander. Taste for salt and pepper—it should be quite spicy. Cover the sauce and keep in a warm place.
5. Slice the black puddings, chorizos and potatoes into even-sized chunks and mix together. Divide between 4 x 12cm-diameter ovenproof dishes, making 2 hollows between the sausages and potatoes.
6. Break an egg into each one. Pour the tomato sauce over the top, completely covering all the ingredients.
7. Put the dishes onto a flat baking sheet and place in the oven for 8 minutes. Remove carefully from the oven, for there are only a few things hotter than bubbling tomato sauce.
8. Sprinkle with extra coriander and serve.
–Serves 4.
Source: New Zealand Listener, in Eat Well, https://www.eatwell.co.nz/
If you can manage to find a good black pudding these days, any of these modern recipes would be very tasty, admittedly. But as you can see, also fat-laden.
The British taste for black pudding has manifestly filtered through to New Zealand cookery. And the French influence? “Boudin” also made its way to the colonies: in Louisiana the blood sausage may still be found today. They call it boudin rouge.
“Boudin is a Cajun sausage that is made from pork, pork organ meat, cooked rice, and vegetables such as onions and peppers and stuffed in pork casings.
“There are basically two types: boudin blanc, or white boudin, and boudin rouge, or red boudin. … Boudin rouge or simply blood boudin, is the traditional favorite, though, but harder to find … The basic difference between boudin blanc and boudin rouge is that boudin rouge contains fresh pig’s blood. It is sometimes, as well, made with beef blood. ...
“Boudin rouge is not made as often as boudin blanc, but it is made and available legally.”
(EricT_CulinaryLore. “Can I Buy Legal Blood Boudin (Red Boudin or Boudin Rouge)? Or Is It Outlawed [in the U.S.]?” Culinary Lore, November 21, 2014)
https://culinarylore.com/category/food-history/
Et vive le boudin!
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