This Classic British Breakfast Food Is Illegal To Import To The US
"Now Antinoös set before him the great paunch pudding that was all filled with fat and blood," wrote Homer in "The Odyssey." The food described in front of Odysseus and Antinoös sounds like the thing of ancient nobles — made of blood and all — but it's also a common British breakfast. Black pudding is a sausage made with congealed blood, fat, meat, and oatmeal cased in intestine or synthetic cellulose. It's made from body parts you could call the stomach or "paunch" of an animal.
Most Americans aren't familiar with this dish because it's rather hard to obtain due to its legal status. Currently, blood sausages like black pudding and haggis can't be imported to the U.S. because they contain banned ingredients. You might not be able to order one from overseas (with hefty shipping prices included), but there are several sausages you can purchase or even make at home that can closely imitate the British version.
A look at the cultural and legal barriers for black pudding
Black pudding isn't common in the U.S. for a few reasons, ranging from legal to cultural. Food imported to and sold within the U.S. must undergo approval from federal agencies, and black pudding, among other blood sausages, sometimes contain animal lungs. A 1970s law dictated that "livestock lungs shall not be saved for use as human food." The U.K.-certified Stornoway black pudding, a product with a protected designated origin, doesn't contain any lung in the official recipe, nor do most others. However, all black pudding recipes do contain animal blood, which must meet specific criteria to be labeled safe for human consumption.
Aside from the legality of it all, the idea of eating blood is strange to some Americans because Jewish and Christian communities have historically had an aversion to it for religious reasons. On the flip side, America is home to several acres of thriving farmland, and eating blood wasn't as necessary as a means for survival. The trend of eating blood sausage didn't catch on here, but some small stateside butcheries, like Donnelly in New York, make a black pudding as good as any across the pond. To make a full English breakfast, enjoy it with a plate of eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, and toast!