Kate Ryan

Blood, Guts and Black Pudding

Blood. The Irish have been dining on it for centuries and they love it. It has sustained warriors in epic battles, staved off hunger, offered protection from bad luck and provided sustenance during winter. It's been drawn from living animals and caught from dead ones, stuffed into guts and boiled until cooked or stirred into bloody porridges over turf fires. It's even in the mortar of castle walls. Mostly we know it as the moody melange of blood and guts that completes the breakfast fry. But this food is older than potatoes, soda bread, whiskey, stout and coddle. Blood is an ancient food from a time when the Irish diet was one of milky, oaty, salty things. No surprise, then, that the best puddings are made when all four unite to form a singularly perfect food. Yet Ireland's ancient tradition of consuming the fresh blood of animals as food is in danger of disappearing forever, and with it an intricate, nuanced foodway that ties together the history of Ireland, its people and their communities, rituals and recipes, craft and custom. Blood, Guts and Black Pudding charts the complete history of Ireland's great pudding tradition, from pre-Christian times to the modern era, celebrating the many ways blood has been cooked, eaten and enjoyed, and questions what else is lost when the blood is gone.