Blood as food

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some cultures consume blood as food, often in combination with meat. This may be in the form of black pudding, as a thickener for sauces, a cured salted form for times of food scarcity, or in a blood soup.^[1]

[edit] Types of food with blood

Blood sausage or black pudding is any sausage made by cooking animal blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. Pig or cattle blood is most often used. Typical fillers include meat, fat, suet, bread, barley and oatmeal. Varieties include drisheen, moronga, blood tongue, kishka (kaszanka), biroldo, mustamakkara, verivorst, and many types of boudin.

Blood soups and stews include curry mee, czernina, dinuguan, haejangguk, mykyrokka, pig's organ soup, and svartsoppa.

Blood pancakes are encountered in Scandinavia and the Baltic; for example, Swedish blodplättar, Finnish veriohukainen, and Estonian veripannkoogid.

Blood is also used as a thickener in sauces, such as coq au vin, and puddings, such as tiết canh. It can provide flavor or color for meat, as in cabidela.

Blood can also be fried and eaten fresh, right away after the animal is slaughtered. In Hungary when a pig is slaughtered in the morning the blood is fried with onions and is served for breakfast.

[edit] Cultural considerations

Some cultures consider blood to be a taboo form of food. In Jewish and Muslim cultures, for instance, consumption of blood is forbidden by religious law. Some Christian cultures also avoid eating blood, and for this reason blood is not commonly consumed in the United States.^{[citation needed]}

In ancient Lakedaimon (Greek city-state of Sparta), the Black broth was common: a soup with pork meat and blood

[edit] References