Tag Archives: recipe

26/12/2025 · 6:20 am

To Make Turkey and Hazelnut Soup (& Turkey Stock)

If you are not loving your leftovers at Christmastime, then you are missing a trick: it doesn’t have to be all dry turkey and cranberry sandwiches for the next week.

This is a really great recipe adapted from Jane Grigson’s English Food. I’ve made a few tweaks, and I have provided you with a method for making turkey stock. This recipe would work with leftover chicken, or even pheasant and partridge, or a mix of them.

Leftover turkey and stuffing are used to make this soup

Because it’s a leftovers dish, don’t worry if you don’t have all of the ingredients, though I would say it’s important to have at least three of the basic soup veg and one herb (fresh or dried). It doesn’t even matter if you don’t have any hazelnuts: almonds would work just as well, or you could miss them out entirely. Also, if there are any leftover boiled or steamed vegetables, or roast potatoes, you can pop them in before everything gets blitzed.

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This recipe makes many servings.

For the soup

2 to 3 tbs of fat: this could be butter, leftover fat from the roast potatoes or skimmed from the roast turkey juices

Basic soup veg, peeled, trimmed and diced, such as 2 carrots, 2 onions, 3 cloves garlic, white part of one or two leeks (keep the green parts for the stock), 3 sticks of celery

Herbs: 4 bay leaves, a small bunch of thyme or a tsp of mixed, dried herbs

1 tsp celery salt

1 bunch tarragon leaves, chopped

1 bunch parsley, chopped

1 medium potato, peeled and diced

1.5-2 L turkey stock

Salt and pepper

2 handfuls diced turkey breast (or whatever you have left)

100 g roast hazelnuts, roughly chopped

Leftover stuffing, cut into approx. 1 cm dice

150 ml cream

Heat the fat in a stockpot or large saucepan and add the diced soup veg and herbs, plus the celery salt. Stir and fry on a medium heat until things begin to turn golden brown. Add half of the parsley and tarragon plus the potato and continue to cook for another 7 or 8 minutes.

Pour in the turkey stock and bring the whole lot to a lively simmer, then turn it down to gently bubble until the vegetables are nice and soft, about 15 minutes.

Taste, and season with salt and pepper at this point, then add the diced turkey and the hazelnuts. Simmer for a further 7 or 8 minutes, then allow to cool slightly before blitzing the soup in batches in your blender or food processor. Be careful here! Don’t overfill your blender, especially if the soup is still quite hot.

Return to a clean pan, bring back to a simmer, add the cream and the rest of the parsley and tarragon, as well as the diced leftover stuffing. Taste and season with more celery salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

For the stock

I keep vegetable trimmings and peelings in bags in my freezer for stock-making sessions such as these; you can, of course, use regular stock vegetables: celery, onions, carrots, leeks, etc.

This secret to getting a good colour to your jellied stock is to brown the carcass and vegetables very well.

Makes around 2 litres of jellied stock

2 tbs of fat or oil

The roast turkey carcass, broken into pieces – don’t be too thorough with removing the meat, leave some on.

Vegetable trimmings and peelings (avoid brassicas) or a mixture of stock vegetables: 2 carrots, 2 celery sticks, the green part of a leek or two, a couple of onions, a few smashed garlic cloves.

Aromatic herbs, e.g. 3 or 4 bay leaves, a small bunch of thyme and/or rosemary, parsley stalks

Aromatic spices, e.g. 1 tsp black peppercorns, 6 cloves, 1 tsp allspice berries, 2 blades of mace

1 tsp salt

Any leftover turkey juices or turkey gravy

Cool water to cover

Heat the fat or oil in a stockpot or pressure cooker and add the turkey carcass, the vegetables, the herbs, the spices as well as the salt. Stir and fry until both the turkey and vegetables are starting to turn a good, golden brown.

Add any leftover gravy and top up with water so that it barely covers the turkey and vegetables.

If cooking in a stockpot: bring slowly to a simmer, turn the heat over and let it cook very gently for two hours.

If cooking in a pressure cooker: bring to a simmer, when high pressure is reached, reduce the heat and cook for 25 minutes before turning off the heat and allowing the stock to depressurise.

If cooking in a slow cooker: transfer everything to your slow cooker (careful!) and cook on a high setting for 1 hour and then a medium setting for 2 more hours.

When the stock is ready, pass the whole thing through a strainer, pressing down on the cooked mush with the back of the ladle: we want as much flavour as possible. Let the stock cool down and then refrigerate. Skim away the fat before using.

Tip: If you need the stock straight away, you can skim the fat with a spoon, but a quicker method is to throw in a couple of handfuls of ice cubes. The fats immediately freeze to the exterior of the cubes, and can be lifted out before the ice has had the chance to melt.

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24/12/2025 · 5:39 am

Lambswool

Merry Christmas everyone!

It’s time for my annual Yuletide boozy drink post. This year: lambswool, a drink very much associated with the Wassail on Twelfth Night (the night before Epiphany, 6 January, and the last day of Christmastide). It has been drunk since at least Tudor times – I cannot find any descriptions prior to the late 16th century. It’s a type of mulled ale, and this description by Robert Herrick in his poem Twelfth Night: Or King and Queen (1648) is a very good one:

Next crowne the lowle full
with gentle lamb’s wool;
Adde sugar, nutmeg and ginger;
with a store of ale too;
and thus ye must doe
to make the wassaille a swinger.[1]

What Henrick doesn’t tell us is that there is cooked apple floating on the top which break apart, hence the name lambswool. These apples are, in the early modern period, generally roasted crab apples, so very sour in flavour, though in later recipes such as the lambswool described by Peter Brears in Traditional Food in Yorkshire, made in Otley, West Yorkshire in 1901, dessert apples are used. They were cored and cooked and floated in the drink, then fished out and eaten separately.[2] Spiced cakes and mince pies were also eaten.[3]

Have a fantastic Christmas – all TWELVE days of it!

Many drinks were laced with rum or brandy and often enriched with eggs, cream or both,[4] such as this one here for ‘Royal Lamb’s Wool’, dated 1633: ‘Boil three pints of ale; – beat six eggs, the whites and yolks together; set both to the fire in a pewter pot; add roasted apples, sugar, beaten nutmegs, cloves and ginger; and, being well brewed, drink it while hot.’[5] Before the lambswool was poured into the Wassail cup sliced of well-toasted bread sat at the bottom. With the apple floating on top, this was basically a full meal. Nice and full, it was then passed around, everyone taking a sup from the communal bowl. I prefer to ladle it into separate glasses or mugs – and I am sure my guests would be pleased with this decision.

Lambswool drinking was not restricted to Twelfth Night, or even Christmastide, as this entry from Samuel Pepys’ diary dated the 9th of November 1666 informs us: ‘Being come home [from an evening of dancing], we to cards, till two in the morning, and drinking lamb’s-wool. So to bed.’[6]

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Recipe

I have to admit, I was unsure about the lambswool, but it was delicious. I think that it should come back, and it is certainly much, much nicer than bought mulled wine. Recipes don’t necessarily specify the type of sugar, but I think light brown sugar really complements the maltiness of the beer well.

A note on the beer: trendy IPAs and other craft beers are far too hoppy for this recipe – I think there’s a flavour clash, so make sure you go for a low-hop traditional brown ale. I used Old Speckled Hen (which is available to buy gluten-free, by the way). The best – and, dare I say it – most authentic choice would be an unhopped ale, but I have never come across one! Add cream and eggs if you think it matches your own tastes: I have to admit that as an eating/drinking experience, the creamy texture worked better with the pureed apple than the version without.

I used dessert apples for the wool, but you can use crap apples if you want to be true to the early modern period, or Bramley’s Seedlings, which do have the benefit of breaking down to a nice fluff. I discovered that it’s very difficult to get your apples to float on top, but this is not of great importance. Sam Bilton has an ingenious way of getting her apple puree to float though, and that is to fold a whipped egg white into the cooked apple puree.[7]

Makes 6 to 8 servings

6 small to medium-sized dessert apples

Caster sugar to taste (optional)

2 x 500 ml bottles of brown ale

120 – 140 g soft dark brown sugar

2 cinnamon sticks

8 cloves

1 tsp ground ginger

120 ml dark rum or brandy

4 eggs (optional)

300 ml cream (any kind will do; optional)

To serve: freshly-grated nutmeg

Start by making the apple purée: peel, core and chop the apples and place in a small saucepan with a few tablespoons of water, cover, turn the heat to medium, and cook until soft. If the apples don’t break down naturally, use the back of a wooden spoon. Add caster sugar to taste – if any is needed at all.

Whilst the apples are cooking down, pour the beer into a saucepan, add 120 g of soft dark brown sugar if making the non-creamy/eggy version, or add 140 g if you’re intrigued by it! Snap the cinnamon sticks and chuck those in along with the other spices. Turn the heat to medium and let it all get nice and steaming-hot; you don’t want it to boil, otherwise you’ll lose a lot of the alcohol. Leave for 10 minutes so the spices can infuse, then add the rum or brandy. Let it come back up to heat for another five minutes. If you don’t want to make the custardy version, the lambswool is ready, and it can be ladled out into glasses or mugs and top with a couple of spoons of the warm apple purée and a few raspings of freshly-grated nutmeg.

For the custardy version: after you add the brandy or rum, whisk the eggs and cream in a bowl, take the lambswool off the heat, and pour three or four ladlefuls of it into the cream and egg mixture, whisking all the time. Now whisk this mixture into the lambswool, and stir over a medium-low heat until it thickens. If you want to use a thermometer to help you, you are looking to reach a temperature of 80°C. Pass the whole lot through a sieve and into a clean pan, and serve as above.

Notes

[1] Herrick, Robert. Works of Robert Herrick. vol II. Alfred Pollard, ed., London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1891.

[2] Brears, P. (2014) Traditional Food in Yorkshire. Prospect Books.

[3] Brears (2014); Crosby, J. (2023) Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century: Material Innovation and Cultural Tradition. Bloomsbury.

[4] Hole, C. (1976) British Folk Customs. Hutchinson Publishing Ltd.

[5] Though quoted in many places, I could not find the source of this recipe – but the reigning monarch was Charles I

[6] Diary entries from November 1666, The Diary of Samuel Pepys website https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/11/.

[7] Bilton, S. (2025) Much Ado About Cooking: Delicious Shakespearean Feasts for Every Occasion. Hachette UK.

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17/12/2025 · 12:35 pm

Nesselrode Pudding

This delicious iced dessert, which was very popular in the 19th century at Christmastime, crops up in most cookery books of the time, and is described as ‘a quiet Victorian icon’ by Annie Gray in her excellent book At Christmas We Feast (2021).[1] It is associated with this time of year because of its main ingredient: puréed chestnuts, and it deserves a comeback.

Count Nesselrode (Creative Commons)

According to Eliza Acton, the pudding was invented by the famous Marie-Antoine Carême,[2] but it is not the case. In one of her best (and most obscure) books, Food with the Famous, Jane Grigson informs us that it was actually ‘invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years, to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris.’[3] Annie Gray took the research step further: the first printed recipe appears in Carême’s book L’Art de la Cuisine Française. In the original French version, he tells us he got the recipe from Mony, but in the English translation, he claims he – Carême – invented it.[4] Odd.

Listen to Annie discuss her book At Christmas We Feast with me in this past podcast episode.

Recipes do vary, though chestnuts are essential (unless you are Agnes Marshall, who asks – rather controversially – for almonds, in her Book of Ices[5]). Other ingredients include glacé and dried fruits, vanilla and maraschino liqueur – an essential. in my book, but some recipes suggest using brandy or rum as alternatives. There is a custard base, but the mixture is not churned like regular ice cream: this is a no-churn affair. It’s prevented from freezing to a solid block with the addition of airy whipped cream and Italian meringue.

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Recipe

There are several stages to making this pudding, and you need to start making it at least two days before you want to eat it. Don’t let the making of egg custard sauces and Italian meringues put you off. However, a good digital thermometer and electric beater are essential.

Serves 8

For the pudding:

60 g chopped raisins or mixed fruit (currants, raisins and sultanas)[7]

60 g chopped candied peel or Maraschino cherries

80 ml maraschino

1 vanilla pod

300 ml single cream

3 egg yolks

160 g light brown sugar

160 g caster sugar

3 tbs/45 ml water

2 egg whites

300 ml whipping cream

440 g can or 2 x 200 g packets of unsweetened chestnut purée

To garnish: Maraschino cherries or candied chestnuts

For the custard sauce:

300 ml single cream or half-and-half whole milk and cream

50 g caster sugar

4 egg yolks

Around 25 ml maraschino (see recipe)

Soak the dried fruit and peel or cherries in maraschino overnight.

Next day, split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the seeds and place both pod and seeds in a saucepan along with the single cream and heat to scalding point.

Meanwhile, put the egg yolks and light brown sugar in a mixing bowl, mix and then beat with a balloon whisk until it becomes a few shades paler. Pour in the hot cream by degrees, whisking all the time. Return the mixture to the pan and stir over a medium-low heat until it thickens – don’t let it boil, or you’ll get scrambled eggs – this should take about 5 minutes. If you want to use a thermometer to help you judge this, you are looking for a temperature of 80°C. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a tub, seal, cool and refrigerate until cold.

As it cools, make an Italian meringue: in a thick-bottomed saucepan, add the sugar and water. Place over a medium and stir until the sugar is dissolved, then bring it up to a boil. Insert your thermometer.

Meanwhile, put the whites in a bowl, ready to beat. When the temperature of the syrup hits 110-115°C, start beating the eggs to stiff peaks. When the syrup is 121°C, take the pan off the heat and trickle the syrup into the whites in a steady stream. Keep beating until almost cold – around 10 minutes – then cool completely. Whip the whipping cream until floppy.

Now the Nesselrode pudding can be assembled. Mix the chestnut puree into the cold, rich custard; you may need to use your electric beater to make the mixture smooth. If you like, pass the mixture through a sieve. Using a metal spoon, fold in the cream, then the meringue. Take your time – you don’t want to lose all of the air you have introduced to the meringue and cream. Strain the fruits (keep the alcohol) and fold those into the mixture.

Select your mould – a generous 2 lb/900 g loaf tin is best, but you can use a pudding basin, or anything you like, as long as it has a volume of around 1.5-1.6 litres – and line it with cling film. Gingerly pour or ladle the mixture, cover with more cling film and freeze overnight.

Now make the custard sauce as you normally would – there’s a full method here – flavour with the strained alcohol. Taste it and add more booze if desired. When it tastes just right, add an extra half shot. Cool, cover and refrigerate.

To serve:

Remove the pudding from the freezer 30 to 40 minutes before you want to serve it. At the same time, place the custard sauce in the freezer so that it can get really cold.

Turn out the pudding onto a serving plate, remove the cling film, clean up the edge with kitchen paper and garnish. If the pudding is a bit of a mess around the edge, pipe some whipped cream around it. Pour the ice-cold custard sauce into a jug and serve.

Note: to make nice, neat cuts, pour hot water into a tall mug or (heat-proof) glass and heat up a serrated knife; this heat and a gentle sawing motion should result in clean cuts.

Notes

[1] Gray, A. (2021) At Christmas We Feast: Festive Food Through the Ages. Profile.

[2] This earliest mention of the pudding in the many editions of Acton’s classic Modern Cookery was the 14th. Acton, E. (1854) Modern Cookery for Private Families. 14th ed. Lonman, Brown, Green, and Longhams.

[3] Grigson, J. (1979) Food with the Famous. Grub Street.

[4] Gray (2021)

[5] Marshall, A.B. (1885) The Book of Ices. William Clowes and Sons.

[6] Ibid.

[7] When I made the pudding for the blog, I decided to forego chopping the fruit, wanting nice, big, plump fruits. A mistake: the large pieces sank – rats!

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27/11/2025 · 6:19 pm

White Pudding Ice Cream

After the roaring success of my blood ice cream, I decided to have a crack at making a white pudding ice cream too, using the flavours in Gervase Markham’s recipe.

The blood ice cream was great, but I didn’t call it black pudding ice cream, because I left out one important ingredient: oats. The flavour of wholegrain oats is key, so much so that without them, I don’t think I captured the pudding’s true flavour.

I wanted to change this with this ice cream, but the challenge was to capture the flavour of oats without any annoying frozen groats getting in the way. I decided to take pinhead (steel-cut) oats, soak them in milk and then squeeze it out to create an oat-flavoured milk. This worked really well. I added this to the usual milk and cream to make a custard, warmed it up with the spices and found that it naturally thickened to just the right consistency – all without egg yolks! The mixture froze very well and produced a super-smooth final product. As you can imagine, I was very pleased with this outcome.

Just like the blood ice cream, I soaked some dried fruit in sherry – currants and dates this time, as per Markam’s recipe and stirred them through at the soft-scoop stage of the churning process.

I served my white pudding ice cream with sweet black pudding that had been fried in butter and sugar. I then fried a slice of bread in the sugary and buttery juices and popped the black pudding on top with an accompanying scoop of the white pudding ice cream. It was decadent and delicious!

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16/11/2025 · 5:09 pm

Blood Ice Cream

Blood ice cream and white pudding

Earlier in the year, the fantastic Fruitpig (sponsors of the ninth season of the podcast) very kindly sent me some fresh pig’s blood so that I could try my hand at making some early modern black puddings, inspired by the recipes of Robert May, Kenelm Digby and Thomas Dawson. I made two versions: a savoury one and another sweetened with sugar and currants – both turned out to be delicious.

Listen to the episode of the podcast with Matthew and Grant aka Fruitpig!

A few years ago I read (I forget where) that blood thickens upon heating just like egg yolks, and I had an idea in the back of my mind that blood ice cream might be possible to make, knowing already that the black puddings of the early modern period were often sweet.

Please that the sweet black puddings tasted good, I set about to see if I could find any British examples of blood ice cream or, at least, something similar. I couldn’t find anything. However, I did discover in the pages of Jennifer McLagan’s excellent offal cookbook Odd Bits, a blood and chocolate ice cream recipe, adapted from an Italian set dessert called sanguinaccio alla Neapolitana: little pots of set chocolate custard, thickened with blood instead of egg yolks.

Encouraged by the fact I knew it could be done, I went about adapting my black pudding recipe into an ice cream. I have a good, basic vanilla ice cream recipe that I’ve been using for years, which in turn is based on my custard recipe, and all I did was swap out the eight egg yolks for 200 ml of pig’s blood. Not convinced that the blood would thicken things sufficiently, I popped in two egg yolks for good measure. The milk and cream were flavoured not with a vanilla pod, but the same aromatics as the black pudding: pepper, cloves, mace and dried mixed herbs. I really wanted to include the currants, but knowing they would freeze hard into bullets, I thought an overnight soak in some sherry would work well –  not unlike modern rum and raisin ice cream. I chose sherry because it’s the closest thing we have to sack, the popular fortified wine of the early modern period, and a common addition to recipes.

Well, I am very pleased to say that it was a great success. It was the richest ice cream I have ever eaten: luxurious, aromatic and with a very slight metallic tang. I ate a scoop with one of my early modern white puddings. What a combination!

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Ingredients

300 ml milk

300 ml cream seeds

½ tsp bl peppercorns

1 tsp fennel

½ tsp cloves

2 blades of mace

1 tsp dried mixed herbs

200 ml fresh blood

2 egg yolks

160 g sugar

50 g currants

a few tablespoons of sweet or medium sherry overnight

Method

Pour the milk and cream into a saucepan. Crack the peppercorns and bruise the remaining spices in a pestle and mortar, and add to the milk and cream along with the dried herbs. Mix well, making sure everything has been submerged, and warm the mixture over a medium-low heat and bring everything to scalding point – i.e. just before the milk and cream boil.

Meanwhile, add the blood, egg yolks and sugar to a mixing bowl and whisk together well.

When the mix and cream mixture reaches scalding point, remove the pan from the heat and whisk in around a quarter of it into the blood mixture. When everything is incorporated, beat in the rest of the cream mixture, and pour the whole thing back into the saucepan.

The cooled blood-custard base and the macerated currants

Now keep whisking or stirring until the temperature reaches 80°C – you can tell this temperature is reached because the mixture thickens noticeably and coats the back of a spoon (check with a difital thermometer, if unsure). Take off the heat and pass the whole thing through a sieve into a clean bowl or tub. Leave to cool and refrigerate overnight. Soak the currants in sherry and leave those to macerate overnight too.

Next day, churn the mixture in an ice cream machine until a very thick soft-scoop consistency. As you wait, strain the currants (keep the sherry and drink it!). When the ice cream is almost ready, add the currants.

Pour the mixture into tubs and store in the freezer. Eaten within 3 months.

The ice cream ready to receive its currants and my serving suggestion!

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30/09/2025 · 7:33 pm

#447 Roast Saddle of Lamb (Neil Cooks Grigson)

#447 Roast Saddle of Lamb

Hello! I thought some of you might be interested in a post I just published on the other blog, Neil Cooks Grigson.

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29/08/2025 · 11:18 am

Junket

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17/08/2025 · 8:00 am

White Pudding

I recently had a go at making a fresh blood black pudding, taking inspiration from cookery books from the 16th and 17th centuries. The fresh blood was very kindly sent to me by Matthew Cockin and Grant Harper of Fruitpig, Britain’s last craft producer of fresh blood black pudding, who are also sponsoring the ninth season of The British Food History Podcast. Listen to the episode we recorded here:

We also talked about their hog’s pudding – a type of white pudding – and I felt I had to complete the set and make an Early Modern white pudding as well.

We know where we stand with black puddings: we expect them to be made largely of blood, cereal and fat, but what about white puddings? These are more mysterious, I feel. Modern white puddings are made from ground pork, pork fat, breadcrumbs and rusk or oats, plus lashings of white pepper, and are today associated largely with Scotland and Ireland. There used to be a rich diversity of white puddings right across Britain and Ireland, their contents highly variable, the only prerequisite being that the finished product would come out white. In the Early Modern Period, they were lavish ‘puddings of the privileged’[1], and had more in common with French boudin blanc than modern British white puddings. There was plenty of eggs, milk and cream, and the meat used (if any) was suitably pale in colour: Kenelm Digby’s recipe contained the meat of ‘a good fleshly Capon’ as well as streaky bacon,[2] Thomas Dawson’s was made with a calf’s chauldron, i.e. intestines.[3] Some recipes contain no meat at all: rice pudding could be counted as a form of white pudding in this context. Things do begin to get confusing, however, because some white puddings made with pork are called hog’s puddings, but only some. As Peter Brears wrote in an article on white and hog’s puddings:

Read about the history of puddings in my book The Philosophy of Puddings, from British Library Publishing

On studying these recipes, one rather surprising fact becomes particularly obvious; there is no material significance in the various names given to such puddings. Whether called hog’s or white puddings, their ingredients might be identical, or quite disparate, while many contain absolutely no pork whatsoever.[4]

Today, hog’s puddings are associated with Devon and Cornwall. Fruitpig’s hog’s pudding uses a base of bacon and oats. We can muddy the water even further because a hog’s/white pudding if made with pig’s liver could also go by the name of leverage pudding.

Looking pretty smug with my 17th-century puds!

After a great deal of flicking through cookery books, I decided to make Gervase Markham’s white pudding from his classic The English Housewife (first published 1615), mainly because I had most of the ingredients in the house.

As you can see, Markham’s recipe contains no meat (aside from the beef suet and the pudding casings themselves).[5]

I have to say, they were a triumph! They freeze well and are easy to reheat. When it comes to serving them, let them cool for 5 minutes before cutting into them. The best way I have discovered to eat them (so far) is with crispy smoked bacon and golden syrup. Breakfast of champions.

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Recipe

Makes 6 x 375 g (approx.) puddings:

500 g cracked oat groats or pinhead oatmeal (steel-cut oats)

500 ml whole milk, plus 2 tbs for the saffron (and possibly extra, see recipe)

Around 2.5 metres of beef casings

600 ml whipping or double cream

150 g suet

130 g caster sugar

2 whole eggs plus 4 egg yolks

60 g sliced dates

60 g currants

¼ tsp ground black pepper

1/8 tsp ground cloves

¼ tsp ground mace

2 tsp salt

A 2-finger pinch of saffron

The day before you want to make your puddings, place the oats in a bowl or jar and pour over the milk. Cover and refrigerate. Soak your beef casings in fresh water, cover and refrigerate too.

Next day make the pudding mixture: in a large mixing bowl add the milk-soaked oats, cream, suet, sugar, eggs, dates, currants, ground spices and salt. Stir well. Warm up the 2 tbs of milk, add the saffron strands and allow them to infuse and cool, then stir into the mixture.

Now let everything meld together for a couple of hours so that the whole mixture is the consistency of spoonable porridge. If your oats were particularly absorbent, you may need to loosen the mixture with a few tablespoons of extra milk.

Cut the soaked beef casings into 35 cm lengths and tie the ends securely with string. Now it’s time to attach a funnel to the other end of your first length of gut. I used a jam funnel and secured it with more string.

Hold the funnel in one hand and add small ladlefuls of mixture into the gut. It should slip down relatively easily. Keep the funnel raised and try to massage out any large air bubbles. When the gut is around two-thirds to one-quarter full, remove the end tied to the funnel, press out any air and tie with more string. The casings are slippery and so you must make sure that the knots are made at least 2.5 cm/1 inch from the ends. I found 350 g mixture to be a good amount. Now tie the ends together with more string to make that classic pudding shape.

Keep them covered as you get a large pot of water simmering.

Cook the puddings in batches: drop three into the water and let them gently poach for 35 minutes – there should just be the odd bubble and gurgle coming from the cooking water. You must pop any bubbles immediately with a pin, otherwise the puddings will burst open. Turn the puddings over every 7 or 8 minutes to make sure both sides are cooked evenly.

When cooked, fish the puddings out and hang them up to dry for a few hours, then refrigerate.

To cook the puddings, poach them in more water for around 15 minutes, turning occasionally.

[1] Davison, J. (2015). English Sausages. Prospect Books.

[2] Digby, K. (1669). The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened (1997 reprint) (J. Stevenson & P. Davidson, Eds.). Prospect Books.

[3] Dawson, T. (1596). The Good Housewife’s Jewel (1996 Editi). Southover Press.

[4] Brears, P. (2016). Hog’s Puddings and White Puddings. Petits Propos Culinaires, 106, 69–81.

[5] This recipe is from the 1633 edition: Markham, G. (1633). Country Contentments, or The English Huswife. J. Harison.

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01/08/2025 · 1:40 pm

A Recipe for Early Modern Black Puddings

For years now, I have wanted to make my own fresh blood black puddings, but fresh blood is so tricky to get hold of in Britain, I thought I would never get the opportunity. Lucky for me then, that Fruit Pig, who are sponsoring the ninth season of The British Food History Podcast, kindly sent me a litre of pig’s blood. When it came to recipes, I very much had my eye on Early Modern black puddings because they seem so outlandish compared to traditional black puddings of today. On one hand, they are very British, containing oatmeal and/or breadcrumbs and plenty of chopped beef suet. On the other, they are reminiscent of a French boudin noir in that there are lashings of cream and egg yolks.

If you haven’t listened to the episode about black and white puddings with Matthew and Grant of Fruit Pig listen here.
Read about the history of puddings in The Philosophy of Puddings

There are lots of unexpected herbs and spices, too. Thomas Dawson uses sheep’s blood, milk-soaked oats, suet and what we might think of as the constituents of a mixed spice today: nutmeg, mace, black pepper, ginger and cinnamon.[1] Sir Kenelm Digby liked to use chicken blood, cream, almond cream, bone marrow, sugar, salt, rosewater and eggs.[2] Robert May gives us some precise pointers as well as several ways of making black puddings. In one recipe he combines blood and cream in a ratio of 2:1. Sometimes he soaks oats in milk, sometimes blood: ‘Steep great oatmeal in eight pints of warm goose blood, sheeps blood, calves, or lambs, or fawns blood’. He uses a whole range of interesting herbs, including thyme, spinach, parsley, sorrel and strawberry leaves, to name but a few. He also adds ‘Sometimes for variety, Sugar, Currans, &c.’[3] I really want to know what sweet black pudding tastes like!

Robert May liked to add currants and sugar to his black puddings ‘for variety’.

Using these descriptions as inspiration, I created the recipe below. There was a certain amount of trial-and-error, and whenever I got stuck, I made sure to gain advice from Regula Ysewijn’s Pride and Pudding, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Cookbook and Fergus Henderson’s The Complete Nose to Tail.[4]

I learned a great deal making them – the most important lesson being just how skilled one must be to make these sorts of puddings frequently and in large amounts. It made me appreciate even more the hard work of our forebears and Fruit Pig!

I was really surprised with how well the puddings turned out, and I would certainly recommend giving them a go. I made one batch with sugar and currants and one without. You might be surprised to hear that the sweet one was really quite delicious. I fried my savoury puddings and served them with fried eggs atop some sourdough toast. They tasted rich and were a cross between a black pudding and haggis. I’ll let you know how I served the sweet black puddings.

There are just a couple of things I would have done differently: my main issue was that the butcher gave me pigs’ casings which were not suitable for these black puddings – the nubbly pieces of oat tore through them easily, and the skin burst under their own weight at times. I would therefore recommend beef casings or simply baking them in the oven in loaf tins, or maybe even frying up blood pancakes as suggested by Regula Ysewijn![5]

A big thank you to Matthew and Grant of Fruit Pig for supplying me with fresh blood

If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.

Recipe

Makes approximately 12 x 20 cm black puddings if made in pork casings, and 6 x 20 cm puddings if made in beef casings.

600 g pinhead oats

Milk (see recipe)

1 tsp fennel seeds

½ tsp cloves

½ tsp black peppercorns

3 blades of mace

1 ½ tsp dried, mixed herbs

2 tsp salt

900 ml fresh pig’s blood (or reconstituted dried blood)

600 ml double cream

200 g chopped beef suet

2 whole eggs, beaten

140 g currants (optional)

320 g sugar (optional)

Natural pork or beef skins, soaked in water overnight (optional, see recipe)

The day before you want to make your puddings, place the oats in a bowl or large jug and pour in enough milk to just cover them. Place in the fridge overnight. Grind the spices and mix in the dried herbs and salt.

Next day, place all of the ingredients (aside from the casings, if using) in a large mixing bowl. Combine and allow everything to mingle, dissolve and absorb; around an hour – or more if you have the time.[6]

Once everything has had the chance to macerate and absorb, it is time to assemble the puddings. I used my sausage stuffer funnel from the Kitchen Aid and attached a length of pork casing onto it, then secured it with some string and knotted the end. Then I set about filling the casings, a spoon at a time, letting the skins naturally fill and fall into a bowl. Then I tied a link off with some string, making sure the casing wasn’t full and there were no obvious air bubbles. The lengths of the puddings were around 20 cm – though I wasn’t very consistent. In retrospect, I would recommend using beef casings tied to a wide-mouthed jam funnel, much easier to fill and no constant tearing.

Once all of the mixture is used up, get a large pot of water to a good simmer and gingerly plop them in a few at a time. Three was a good number. Keep the water at a gentle simmer and arm yourself with a pin and pop any bubbles that appear in the cooking puds, lest they burst. They will take around 20 minutes to cook, and you must watch them like a hawk, pin poised and ready to pop. You can tell they are done when the liquid that comes out of a freshly-pricked pudding is clear. If using beef casings, they will take 30 to 35 minutes to cook.

Carefully remove the puddings and either hang them up or lay them on a cooling rack to dry for a few hours before placing them in the refrigerator.

You can avoid all of this faff by baking the mixture in large loaf tins sat in a bain-marie for around 1½ hours at 160°C.[7]

The finished black puddings!

Notes

[1] Dawson, T. (1596). The Good Housewife’s Jewel (1996 Edition). Southover Press.

[2] Digby, K. (1669). The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened (1997 reprint) (J. Stevenson & P. Davidson, Eds.). Prospect Books.

[3] May, R. (2012). The Accomplisht Cook (1660/85) (A. Davidson, M. Bell, & T. Jaine, Eds.; 1685th ed.). Prospect Books.

[4] Fearnley-Whittingstall, H. (2001). The River Cottage Cookbook. Collins; Henderson, F. (2012). The Complete Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking. Bloomsbury; Ysewijn, R. (2015). Pride and Pudding: The History of British Puddings Savoury and Sweet. Murdoch Books.

[5] Ysewijn (2015)

[6] Note: Looking back on these initial stages, it would have been much better to soak the oats in the blood overnight, mix everything together in the morning, let everything meld and mingle for a couple of hours, and then add enough milk to make a mixture of a spoonable porridge consistency. We live and learn.

[7] Note: I haven’t tested this method; these instructions have been extrapolated from the Fergus Henderson recipe for blood cake in Henderson (2012).

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11/07/2025 · 1:56 pm

Cumbrian Tatie Pot (aka Cumberland or Westmorland Hotpot)

In my last post I launched the ninth season of The British Food History Podcast with an episode about Black and White Pudding with Matthew Cockin and Grant Harper (aka Fruit Pig). Not only are they the only remaining craft producer of fresh blood black puddings in Britain, but they are very kindly sponsoring this season of the podcast. Their puddings are exceptional, and Matthew and Grant are very kindly giving readers of the blog and listeners of the podcast 10% off at their online shop (www.fruitpig.co.uk) with the offer code Foodhis, so if you can please support them – if we don’t use producers like Fruit Pig, we will lose them, and that would be a terrible shame. It’s also worth checking with your local butcher – my nearest traditional butcher, Littlewood’s in Heaton Moor, Stockport, the very place where I bought the meat for today’s recipe, stock them – so perhaps yours does too (or you could suggest they do if they don’t!). Have a listen to the episode, if you haven’t already:

Now, I reckon the vast majority of black pudding eaters enjoy theirs as part of a fried breakfast, but I think we need to remember that black puddings can be eaten for any meal, and in the last post I detailed the old traditional way of eating them with mashed potato and apple sauce. Today I am going one better with this delicious and warming Cumbrian Tatie Pot, a hotpot made of lamb, beef and black pudding, pulses and onions, topped not with nice, neat round slices of potato like a Lancashire hotpot, but quartered floury potatoes.[1] It is important that the cheaper, tougher cuts of beef shin and lamb neck are used, and that the hotpot should be cooked long and slow.

The result is a rich and unctuous hotpot that sticks to your ribs and serves plenty of people; it was on the menu at The Buttery in the first year it was open, and it was very popular.[2] Well-flavoured meat cuts like shin and neck require a similarly good-flavoured black pudding like those made by Fruit Pig.

I first heard about this rather decadent one-pot dish from Jane Grigson in her book English Food.[3] I can find only a few other references to it – a regional dish that seems to be rarely cooked today, yet should, in my opinion, be much more popular than it is.

A before and after look at the tatie pot!

Jane was given the recipe from a Mrs Burrows, and in English Food, she tells us that ‘Mrs Burrows said that what interested her was that the tatie pot is one of our few dishes in which different meats are combined, something which is common in mainland Europe.’ Indeed, and assuming your black pudding contains pigs’ blood, then we have three species of mammal altogether; very rare indeed!

Jane Grigson points out that some recipes say that the beef is optional, ‘which it most definitely is not’, she writes, ‘[i]t makes the character of the dish.’ Looking at similar Lakeland recipes available on the Foods of England Project website, there are recipes that contain beef but not lamb (Westmorland tatie pot), and lamb but not beef (Cumberland hotpot). Neither contain pulses, and both have sliced potatoes nicely arranged on top like a Lancashire hotpot.[4] I’m not saying that Jane’s is right and others wrong; it is just interesting to me that everyone has their own correct version of a dish, possibly with slight geographical differences, and usually it’s the one you grew up with, the one that is most familiar to you, that is the ‘right’ one.

If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.

Shin of beef (L) and lamb neck (R) are the best cuts for this delicious hotpot

Recipe

The long cook time on this hotpot means that you need to keep the liquid levels topped up. You can use stock or water for this – there is nothing wrong with the latter when cooking with these robust cuts of meat.

Serves 8

4 tbs dried split peas or mixed pulses

750 g shin of beef

750 g lamb neck (‘scrag end’ of neck)

1 level tablespoon of cornflour

Salt and pepper

One 350 g Fruit Pig black pudding

2 onions, peeled and sliced, or 2 leeks, trimmed, rinsed and thinly sliced

Around 1.2 kg floury potatoes

Around 800 ml hot light beef, lamb, or chicken stock, or water

Soak the pulses in water overnight (or, if you are badly organised, soak in warm water for 4 or 5 hours).

Preheat your oven to 160°C. Shake the meat, cut into neat chunks, with the cornflour, and scatter the pieces over the base of a large casserole, season with salt and pepper, then tuck in slices of the black pudding. Sprinkle with the onions or leeks and the drained pulses. Peel the potatoes and slice them into quarters lengthways. Arrange the quarters on top; I find it is impossible to do this neatly. Pour over enough stock to go halfway up the potatoes and season them with more salt and pepper.

Building up the layers…

Bake for 4 hours, topping up with more stock or water every hour or so.

Serve with steamed green vegetables or braised red cabbage.

Notes:

[1] Grigson, J. (1992). English Food (Third Edit). Penguin.

[2] The Buttery was my bricks-and-mortar restaurant in Levenshulme, Manchester, open between 2016 and 2017, though it did exist as a pop up restaurant and artisan market stall before that.

[3] For those not in the know, I got into this traditional cookery and food history malarky because I cooked every recipe (well, almost every recipe) in Jane’s wonderful book. This was my first blog Neil Cooks Grigson. Hear about it in this podcast episode from season 8:

[4] Hughes, G. Tatie Pot. The Foods of England Project; https://foodsofengland.info/tatiepotorcumberlandhotpot.html.

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