Black pudding is back on the menu, thanks to austerity and celebrity chefs
Black pudding may be as integral to British culinary culture as fish and chips, spotted dick and the Sunday roast, but – perhaps due to queasiness over its main ingredient – it has languished at the bottom of the nation’s collective shopping list for years.
But now, through a combination of celebrity chef endorsements and economic austerity the “blood sausage” is enjoying a sales boom. Producers of traditional black puddings, from the Outer Hebrides to the rolling foothills around the Lancashire valleys, say demand for their product has soared by up to 25% over the past year.
Duncan Haigh, owner of Arthur Haigh, near Thirsk in North Yorkshire, which makes the award-winning Doreen’s Black Pudding, had to build an extension to his premises in order to cope with demand.
“Black pudding is not just for breakfast any more,” Haigh said. “A lot of chefs are using it because they realise it brings richness to a dish. It’s now found in starters and main courses.”
Depending on the regional variation, black puddings contain a mix of dried blood, salt and rusk.
Some producers prefer ox or sheep blood to that of pigs while others employ suet and oatmeal in their recipes. But whatever the outcome, traditional black pudding makers keep their exact contents a closely guarded secret.
Chadwick’s Original Bury Black Pudding has been making its distinctive puddings since 1865. The firm’s stall on Bury market, Greater Manchester, is a local tourist attraction.
Tony is married to Mary Chadwick. He said: “It’s a family recipe which has been handed down. Mary’s father wouldn’t tell her what it was until he’d had a stroke. And I wasn’t told until the night before we had our first child.”
He added: “I call [our puddings] Lancashire viagra. It is honest food, cheap and filling. People are either repulsed by it or can’t stop bestowing praise.
Compared to sales of black puddings in Scotland and Yorkshire – up 25% and 20% respectively year-on-year – Manchester and Lancashire-based black pudding companies report increases of 10%. However, in the weeks following promotion of black pudding by television chefs, sales rocket by up to 50%.
Some black pudding adherents believe the confection to be as old as civilisation itself. The first written record of black pudding is thought to be in Homer’s Odyssey. The Greek general Agamemnon was said to have fed his army on blood and onions to keep them strong.
Andrew Holt, owner of The Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company in Rossendale, says that the Romans were expert sausage makers who took the blood and onions recipe, placed it into skins and thereby introduced the black pudding across their empire. Holt, who is a Knight of the Black Pudding – awarded in France where the meal goes by the title of boudin noir – produces 10 tonnes of black pudding on a good week. That equates to about 15,500 individual puds. Meanwhile, his company also supplies Morrisons and other retailers with tripe, sales of which have rocketed by more than 300% over the past year. “We literally can’t pack enough tripe for Morrisons,” said Holt. “We are constantly running out.”
Chadwick’s also reports a much greater appetite for offal, including a surge in demand for pigs’ feet, cow heel and pigs’ cheeks. One imaginatively-titled form of tripe is called “slut”.
Most traditional black pudding makers take a dim view of pale imitations, including Robert Smith, owner of WJ MacDonald, producers of the Stornoway Black Pudding in the Western Isles. Pride in their produce is so strong that a bid has been made to the EU to give the Stornoway black pudding protection status.
But some change is inevitable. Today’s butchers market low-fat or “lean” black pudding for the more health conscious consumer, while The Real Lancashire’s vegetarian black pudding, the V Pud – made with synthetic sleeve, pearl barley, rusk, rolled oats, soya protein and non-hydrogenated vegetable oil – now accounts for one in 10 of its black pudding sales.
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