Blood sausage or black pudding or blood pudding is a food made by cooking down the blood of an animal with meat, fat or filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. Most often, it is pig or cattle blood that is used. Sheep and goat blood are used to a lesser extent while blood from poultry is very seldom used. A legend attributes the invention of blood sausage to an absinthe-induced bet between two drunken Bavarian butchers during the 14th century. In fact, there are ancient references to sausages made with blood, e.g. from Homer's Odyssey - "As when a man besides a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood and turns it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted. . .".

In Ireland and Great Britain, blood sausage is called black pudding. The ingredients include pig's blood, suet, bread, barley and oatmeal. Black pudding is usually served as part of a traditional English breakfast. The further addition of the similar white pudding is an important feature of the traditional Irish breakfast. The Lancashire town of Bury is noted for its black pudding, as is the County Cork town of Clonakilty, which exports black pudding as a delicacy item. Black (red and white) pudding is also served battered at chip shops in Scotland as an alternative to fish (see Fish and chips).

The most common variant of German Blutwurst is made from fatty pork meat, beef blood and filler such as barley. Though already cooked and "ready to eat" it is usually served warm. In Rhineland, where it is also traditionally made from horse meat, fried Blutwurst is a part of various dishes, see Eschweiler.

Other varieties of blood sausage include boudin noir (France), boudin rouge (Creole and Cajun), morcilla (Spain and South America), prieta (Chile) and mustamakkara (Finland). In Eastern Europe, kishka is made with pig's blood and buckwheat kasha. In Taiwan, ti-hoeh-koé ("pig blood cake") is made of pork blood and sticky rice and fried or steamed for snack or used for hot pot. No animal casing is used. A similar dish from the Philippines is known as "chocolate meat".

See also

• Sausage