In praise of …..black pudding

So good it gets the lowest nutri-score rating

Black pudding is a traditional breakfast food, popular in Britain and Ireland. We’ve been eating it for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

It goes back a long way, which to some nutrition experts means it must be a serious threat to health, in need of correcting with something punitive and wholegrain. It certainly looks lethal, black as night and studded with blobs of white fat. The black part is congealed blood.

What’s not to love?

Black pudding is like sausage, but without the meat. Sometimes it’s called blood sausage, which is not to put too fine a point on it.

This delicacy is made by mixing cooked pig’s blood with a filler, usually oatmeal, until it is thick enough to congeal. It also contains lots of fat, usually pork fat. What is added after that varies from one recipe to another, but usually includes onions, salt, pepper and herbs. Quality black pudding will contain little or nothing else.

We may think of black pudding as quintessentially British but most countries where pork is produced have their own version of this thrifty dish. As to where it originated, I’m staying out of that argument. Lancashire and Yorkshire can fight it out among themselves.

If you haven’t done so already, I urge you to give it a try. Once you overcome any initial - but frankly irrational - revulsion at the thought of consuming pig's blood, you too will concede that the finished product (best if fried in lard) is sublime. Save your revulsion for genuine food horrors, like fake meat products.

In nutrition terms, black pudding is far superior to any putative ‘superfood’. Blood, as you’d expect, is full of nutrients, especially iron, zinc, calcium and protein. It is also rich in vitamin A and, importantly, vitamin B12, a vitamin only available from animal-based sources.

Pork fat contains saturated fatty acids, but the main fat it contains is monounsaturated. Monounsaturated fat is the type found in olive oil, and we have all heard plenty about that. One of the reasons we are exhorted to consume a ‘Mediterranean' diet is because of the generous use of olive oil, with its abundant, heart-healthy monounsaturated fat.

Blood was, until fairly recently, a regular part of the diet of the Maasai of East Africa, along with meat, milk and yogurt. In fact they ate very little else, other than herbs. Now, blood is consumed only occasionally. As recently as the 1970s their diet was considered something of a mystery. Despite all this meat, milk and blood creating a diet that was 66% fat and chock-full of cholesterol they demonstrated an absence of heart disease and ‘extreme rarity of cholesterol gallstones’.

It wasn’t that long ago that blood consumption was a regular thing everywhere – one theory has it that we have the Romans to thank for bringing their version of black pudding to these shores. According to The Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company, the first written mention of this food item was 800 BC, when it appeared in Homer’s epic saga, The Odyssey.

You can’t import black pudding into the US, but there are companies that make their own versions there.

There is one caveat to this black pudding eulogy - I would advise you to be aware of the source of your sausage. Make sure it’s locally made (by which I mean, in your own country). Here in Britain, common supermarket varieties are usually made using dried imported blood from who knows where.

Black pudding goes exceptionally well with bacon and eggs, creating the sort of breakfast or brunch that will see you through till dinner.

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You won’t see black pudding featuring on any food pyramids or in any guidelines. But in the same way that the Earth isn’t flat, and matter isn’t solid, assumptions about this natural food are reverse-true. Black pudding is both delicious and nutritious, and I give it an ‘A’ Real-Nutri score.