Blood as food

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. [Davidson, Alan. "The Oxford Companion to Food". 2nd ed. UK: Oxford University Press, 2006., p. 81-82.] The Maasai of Tanzania consume the blood of cattle--which is let directly from the neck of the live animal and the wound allowed to heal--mixed with milk.

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, tiet canh 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 or pressed duck, 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.

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, see also Abrahamic religions. In the Christian Bible, blood was forbidden by the Apostolic Decree () and is still forbidden among Greek Orthodox [Karl Josef von Hefele's [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.viii.v.iv.ii.html commentary on canon II of Gangra] notes: "We further see that, at the time of the Synod of Gangra, the rule of the Apostolic Synod with regard to blood and things strangled was still in force. With the Greeks, indeed, it continued always in force as their Euchologies still show. Balsamon also, the well-known commentator on the canons of the Middle Ages, in his commentary on the sixty-third Apostolic Canon, expressly blames the Latins because they had ceased to observe this command. What the Latin Church, however, thought on this subject about the year 400, is shown by St. Augustine in his work Contra Faustum, where he states that the Apostles had given this command in order to unite the heathens and Jews in the one ark of Noah; but that then, when the barrier between Jewish and heathen converts had fallen, this command concerning things strangled and blood had lost its meaning, and was only observed by few. But still, as late as the eighth century, Pope Gregory the Third (731) forbade the eating of blood or things strangled under threat of a penance of forty days. No one will pretend that the disciplinary enactments of any council, even though it be one of the undisputed Ecumenical Synods, can be of greater and more unchanging force than the decree of that first council, held by the Holy Apostles at Jerusalem, and the fact that its decree has been obsolete for centuries in the West is proof that even Ecumenical canons may be of only temporary utility and may be repealed by disuse, like other laws."] . See also Biblical law in Christianity.

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

References