Taste Panel - Slow Food Edinburgh

10^th November 2008

 

Black Pudding

 

Crombie’s of Edinburgh

97-101 Broughton Street, Edinburgh,
EH1 3RZ, Tel: 0131 557 0111. www.sausages.co.uk

Highly spiced, with cinnamon in prominence, this black pudding was reminiscent of Spanish Morcilla for some of the panel and Christmas for others.

The pudding had a smooth textured with very little visible fat or grain and a strong peppery aftertaste.

 

Anderson’s Butchers, 12-14 High Street, Edinburgh, East Lothian EH40 3AB

A smooth pasted pudding but with distinct visible pieces of fat and barley, this pudding also has a spicy aftertaste.

 

Hall’s (Grampian Food, Vion Food Group.) 220 East Main Street, Broxburn, West Lothian, EH52 5AW

We added this “mass produced” black pudding into the tasting for comparison and as it is produced within the Edinburgh area. The pudding had a pleasant, inoffensive flavour with a relatively fine texture. It was milder than the other puddings we tasted but was not flavourless.

 

Charles MacLeod, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Highlands, HS1 2LB. www.charlesmacleod.co.uk

This isn’t exactly a local Haggis, but Charles MacLeod’s Stornoway pudding is well renowned and available fairly widely including in several Edinburgh outlets (see Charles Macleod website for details of some outlets.) We thought it would make an interesting comparison and in the end this was by far the panel’s favourite pudding on the night.

This pudding has a soft, loose texture with flecks of onions, which also serve to give the pudding a gentle sweetness. The flavours were balanced and we felt it could lend itself to a variety of situations from a breakfast fry-up to a fish or scallop pairing for dinner.

 

And for something a little bit different.

Just to try to consume as much black pudding as possible in one sitting we also had a blood pudding from the North-West of Spain.  Here the local pudding is made with rice and spiced with paprika. The addition of rice, instead of the oatmeal or barley used in the UK, gives the pudding a much lighter and more crumbly texture. Well worth a try as a comparison if you come across is or are on holiday in the region.