It’s a Nice Day for a Black Pudding

This savory sausage, often served at breakfast, traditionally gets its rich color and flavor from blood. Anney and Lauren dig into the history and etymology of black pudding.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Favor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we
have an episode for you about black pudding. Yes. Oh,
I'm excited to talk about this. Oh me too. Uh
And as we record this, uh, St Patrick's Day is
about it's a week away. It's exactly a week away. Yes,

(00:30):
and right, so I was, you know, we were thinking
of topics, and uh, I thought of one of my
very favorite parts of one of my very favorite things,
which is a big old I wish your English breakfast
with some blood pudding. Yeah. Mm hmmm. It's funny because

(00:53):
I have a new tradition which is quarantine Anniversary. Oh no,
it's coming up on Saturday, March two years. Uh. But
I got my first vaccine on St. Patrick's Day. So anyways, St.

(01:14):
Patrick's Day has kind of become yeah, sort of part
of the yeah, yeah, the whole thing. But I got
a whole celebration plan. There's going to be corned beef
and guinness, uh and other things that I had before
I knew a pandemic was going that day. So it's
gonna be good. Um. So I have had a few

(01:35):
black puddings in my life, and I will say the
first time I had it, I had no idea what
it was. Um. And as mentioned in previous episodes, that
in part was because the word pudding can mean a
lot of different things. I mean mostly well, okay, now there, No,

(01:56):
it can be a bunch of different things, sure, um,
but especially in American versus UK English, Yes, um. In
the United States, when you say putting, people think of
like a creamy dessert. Yes, uh. And in the UK
when you say putting you often mean, oh, I don't know.

(02:21):
It could be several things. Yeah, it could be it
could be like a steamed dessert, or it could be
like a kind of sausage. There's a bunch of a
bunch of stuff in there, yes, which we will talk about.
We will talk yeah, oh yeah, which I got so
excited about. Yes, I did too, um because it's it's
always fun. It kind of reminds me of our Ambrosia

(02:43):
episode where literally, I'm still kind of unclear, can mean
so many different things based on who you're asking. I
feel like putting is similar. However, I am such a
nerd I immediately think of dungeons and dragons, and in fact,
I believe the first creature you fought in the current

(03:05):
campaign we have going was a pudding. It was in
the Pudding family of monsters. I I don't remember you
calling it a pudding, but um but it was. I
do remember fighting an ooze, so um. Well, a lot
of times what I do a peek behind the curtains

(03:27):
is I have like a villain I want, but it's
too difficult for like, at the time, this was your
first battle, so I don't want you to look it
up and be like, no, pudding can't do that whatever,
So I kind of like, don't tell you what it is,
just sort of make appropriate for the level that you're
currently on. All right, that's good. I'm get wiped out

(03:54):
immediately by and it certainly not by a pudding. That
would be U. It would be you would be a
bad d M if you let your entire party perm
like first game due to a pudding. That would be
although I will say it was like the most optional,

(04:16):
optional battles you could have chosen, so you know, just
to put that out there, we do like murdering, So
there you go. Go. Goodness, by gracious um for anybody
who has no idea what we're talking about. It would
take too long to explain, and I'm sorry, yes, um,

(04:38):
we will. We will come back to another note about
dungeons and dragons later though, never fear, um or fear
or fear or fear to choose your own adventure. Yeah, yeah, First.
The first time I had a black pudding was in
England at like a chain pub for breakfast as part
of like a large plate of like seventeen different kinds

(05:01):
of meats. It was so delightful, um, and uh, yeah,
I think i'd always I read about it before in
I don't know, I'm assuming like like UK children's books
or possibly like The Hobbit or something like that. Um,
but right, but didn't wasn't really sure what it was

(05:24):
until like it showed up on my plate and I
was like, oh, that's what it is. Cool. Yeah, I
think I I similarly had it on a kind of
like traditional breakfast thing when I was in London. Ah,
and I believe I was so unaware of what it
was that I thought like something else on the plate

(05:45):
was like I've had no idea what it was, but
I liked everything on the plate so so good, so good.
I think this was this is like one of the
most problematic cravings I've had in a hot minute, because
I don't I don't know how to source this. Yeah,
this is a tricky one, for sure. I think we

(06:09):
can pull it off, though. Um. You can see our
past episodes on boudin Um or on Haggis, which is
related to what we're going to be talking about totally
m But I guess that brings us to our question.
Black pudding. What is it? Well, black pudding is a

(06:33):
type of sausage that is made not from ground meat,
but rather some kind of like hardy grain cereal like
oats or barley, that's mixed with blood and animal fat
and seasoned with onion, salt, pepper, and and usually some
kind of like heavy herbs like a time or savory.
It's a stuffed into casings, typically and cooked until tender

(06:56):
and uh like this deep reddish, purply black color, and
often served fried up in thick slices for breakfast, alongside
things like eggs and bacon and beans and tomatoes and
mushrooms and sliced ham and toast. I'm so hungry right now, uh,
and and more other sausages. Why not put some more
sausage on that plate. Um. But yeah, black pudding is

(07:18):
chewy and tender and fatty and salty and a little
like earthy or nutty. And it's it's like it's like
salami made with the extra scrappy scraps. Yeah. Um, it's
like a it's like a dense, dark meat ball without
the meat. Ah. It's so so comforting and like stick

(07:41):
to hear ribs. Oh. I just was reminded of scrapple,
which we still haven't tried. Oh, yes, it sounds I
just need people to make me breakfast. Agreed. Wow, that

(08:02):
is something that I missed so hard right now, okay, anyway, anyway, Um,
to make a black pudding, you cook the oats. These days,
I've seen recipes usually call for you cooking the oats
in water or maybe like water and milk, and then
blend that with the rest of your ingredients and either
stuff into a casing or maybe a pudding cloth and

(08:24):
boil it, or form it up into a loaf pan
and bake it. And yeah, the finished product will be
studded with like pale bits of that main cereal grain. Um.
Pork is the traditional blood and fat component, but beef
and sheep are pretty common to UM. Blood itself is
a thickening agent, but other thickeners might include stuff like
bread crumbs or wheat flour. You might add cream or

(08:46):
spices like ginger, mace, coriander, or nutmeg. UM. White pudding
is made the same way, but without the blood. UM.
So it's just that that it's it's white because it's
just that cereal grain color. Yeah. And there are all
kinds of blood sausages made around the world, UM, in

(09:09):
similar to kind of quite different styles. UM. We're not
talking very much about those today, Nope, too much. Yeah, yeah,
but we are aware they exist. Narrowing in UM. Yeah,
but I mean there are all kinds of black pudding
made to UM. Chefs and food companies have been adding

(09:30):
all kinds of like accompanying ingredients to to those to
those basics. UM, I've seen recipes call for hot chilies
or u chunks of like beets or rhubarb or apples
or pears or um or some like some like wine
soaked raisins, um, some chocolate. Yeah. Yeah, they're you know,

(09:51):
like gluten free versions, vegetarian versions, and aside from sliced
on a breakfast plate, you know, you can use black pudding. However,
you use sausage um as like the protein and a
main dish, or chopped up in a stew, crumbled out
of its casing and used as a filling or a
mix in for savory baked goods or cast rolls or

(10:11):
what have you, or just like straight up with salt vinegar.
Mm hmm hm. Well what about the nutrition. Uh tends
to be a calorie dense food, has a bit of
carbs and protein um and a great smattering of minerals,
but is heavy on the fat and on the salt um.

(10:34):
So watch out for that. If those are things you're
watching for, watch your portion sizes in general. Eat a vegetable,
you know, always always vegetable, yes, uh, and we do
have some numbers for you. We do this one I
couldn't track down. It was it was difficult to track down,
like economics related numbers, um, but UH I did find

(10:59):
the there's this French based organization called in translation, the
Brotherhood of the Knights of the Blood Sausage and all right,
I'm into it, okay, And uh they've been operating since
nineteen sixty three and uh in ten they inducted um

(11:23):
Irish black pudding producers into their ranks. For the first time,
they inducted three three black pudding makers from Ireland. Um.
Every year they award like dozens of medals in different
blood sausage categories to different blood sausage submissions. UM. As

(11:44):
of as, they received six hundred and eleven entries from
three hundred and sixty three competitors. Wow, okay, okay, I
feel like they need to be inducted into our long
talked about but never actually done a dunker cartoon. We've

(12:10):
got a lot of pieces. Yeah, I just haven't followed through.
But I feel like Knights of the Blood Sauces should
be there. Yeah. Uh, like the Black Pudding Night would
certainly be and he could be at odds with the
Toastmaster if anyone's completely lost. This is like a cartoon

(12:31):
we have that's mostly pun based about a doughnut that
solves crimes. Um. Yeah, I don't know why we've never
actually produced it. Yeah, it's weird sounds, it's great. I
have some illustrations already, you do, you do. We've got
lots of ideas. We've got lots of ideas followed through

(12:53):
where we are falling down right now. But anywhere. Um.
The town of rams Bottom in Lancashire are Greater Manchester,
England is home to the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships,
but that's a good. Annually, on the second Sunday in September,

(13:15):
a steam train arrives with a golden grid that is
transported to the Oaks Pub with an entourage of bag pipers.
Once the grid is placed, a slew of brave souls
will attempt to throw some black puddings at Yorkshire puddings,
which are like a Brettier variety. A one pound entry

(13:38):
fee gets the contestant three blood puddings wrapped in tights
to keep them from baking apart, and these blood puddings
are then thrown at twelve Yorkshire puddings, resigning a top
a twenty foot scaffold. Whoever knocks the most Yorkshire puddings
off the scaffold winds. The winner in knocked down eight

(14:03):
in a single throw. Yeah, that's pretty good. His prize
was a silver trophy filled with black puddings. Of course,
it was oh, I love this so much, I love
this so much. Uh So this event goes back to
at least the nineteen eighties, though some argument goes back

(14:24):
all the way to the War of Roses in the
fifteen century. Basically, the story goes that both sides ran
out of ammunition, so they started throwing food at each other.
I don't know about that, but this a bit sounds fun. Yes,
it sounds tremendously fun. It. Um. I was reading some

(14:45):
like firsthand accounts of going and it seems it seems
like a great party. It seems like just a really
great street party. Um, they could not hold one due
to the pandemic, but it was back in so so
I assume it's going to be back this year hopefully. Yes,
And listeners, if you have been, if you have competed,

(15:06):
we've got to know about it. Oh yeah, oh yeah,
it's and and like it is internationally attended like it is.
You're right, Oh gosh, one day maybe one day. Oh well.
In the meantime, we do have a lot of history

(15:26):
for you. We do, and we're going to get into
that as soon as we get back from a quick break.
For a word from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So. Yes. There are a
lot of types of blood sausages around the world, but

(15:50):
for this episode, we're focusing on one general type thought
to have originated in Ireland and Great Britain. The British
in particular do like to lay claim to it um
and of course there are ancestors in history within that,
but that's kind of our focus. Yeah, yeah, yes, And
it's got quite enough going on as it is, because yes,

(16:14):
as mentioned, the term pudding has been used for all
kinds of foods throughout history, so that's confusion already. On
top of that, some historians called the black pudding the
most ancient of sausages and puddings, so that's a lot,
and they generally agree that the first puddings produced by

(16:34):
ancient cooks were savory and meat based and perhaps sausage
like things like the ancient Roman sausage composed of pigs,
blood and thickeners um, though others credit the ancient Greeks
with this invention instead. M could be both. I'm always
like probably probably probably probably, just people were like, what

(16:56):
are we gonna do with all this blood? Let's figure
out some way to use it? Exactly As discussed in
many previous episodes, dishes like this had a lot to
do with preservation, making ingredients stretch and not wasting anything.
So when a pig is killed for eating, yeah, there
is a lot of blood, and blood is pretty perishable.

(17:16):
This was before refrigeration too, so it made sense to
encase this blood and some of the slaughtered animals in
trails and cook it in order to get as much
food as possible from the livestock. Right around one thousand BC,
E Homer's the Odyssey mentions what many would call a
black pudding, a fire roasted stomach filled with fat and blood.

(17:40):
The believed oldest detailed recipe of black pudding can be
found in the Epiquous from the first few centuries Sea
somewhere in there, which recommended intestines as opposed to a
stomach as the casing. It also called for chopped leaks, onions,
hard balled egg yolks, and pine kernels. Oh that's so good,

(18:00):
I know, right. Uh. Notably, it didn't call for any
type of cereal. The most black puddings at the time
were probably being made using some type of cereal. Even
poor families typically had a pig that was slaughtered in
the fall to last three winter months, meaning that black
pudding was most likely pretty common, though due to the timing,

(18:22):
like so many port dishes we've discussed. They did become
somewhat associated with holidays and feasts, but pigs were not
at all the only animal used to make black pudding.
Sheep and goats were also pretty common, but all animals
were fair game and the meat used often reflected class.

(18:44):
I wanted to include this quote from Colin Spencer's British
Food and Extraordinary Thousand Years of History. Sausages were also
a great favorite. Indeed, from Greek times they appeared to
have been a staple in the kitchen in all countries.
Perhaps the reason lies in their economical way of using
all the odd bits of the carcass and once well seasoned,
moistened with tasty fat, the smoking and drying intensifying the flavor.

(19:07):
They became an addiction in a country's food, reflecting the
taste of a region in their use of particular flavorings.
Late autumn was the time to make black puddings, which
became a delicacy to be eaten on feast days. They
could be putting the porpoise mixed with oatmeal, seasoning and blood,
or of capein's neck, where the stuffing was forced into
the neck then roasted with the bird. How much spice

(19:29):
was used in the recipes must have been a personal choice,
partly dictated by economics. So yeah, a lot of different
varieties going on. Yeah, sure, it's right. Yeah, one of
those one of those foods of necessity and and practicality

(19:49):
that became its own, its own, separate, separate thing. Yes, yes,
it chifts uh um. And I also wanted to include
the quote from brid Mayhun's work Land of Milk and
Honey at the Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink.
And this was a quote that they sourced from a

(20:10):
historical document to describe a method once she used to
make black pudding. Uh huh long ago. When they killed pigs,
they kept the intestines to make puddings. They washed them
clear and a running stream, and they were left to
soak and spring water overnight. The castings were cut into
fifteen inch lengths tied at one end. Salt lard, oatmeal,

(20:31):
finely chopped onions, spices, peppers, and cloves, together with a
cup of flour, were mixed with the pig's blood which
had been collected in a bucket. Each pudding was three
quarters filled and tied at the end. It was dropped
into a pot half filled with water, which had been
brought to simmering point, cooked for about an hour, then
taken up, allowed to cool, and divided amongst the neighbors.

(20:52):
This was always done when needed for use. Puddings were
fried in a pan. This was always done. I like, ye, yes,
flitting it up with your neighbors. Not sure of course, man, okay,
just like I really want this right now. I don't

(21:12):
know why this, of all things is my cravings episode.
Um okay uh. Meanwhile, back to this, to this um
etymology confusion. All right. So the word pudding was in
use in English by around so um, and at first
it did apply just to sausages, right, um Uh. There's

(21:35):
a bit of an argument over whether we got the
word from a Germanic root pud meaning to swell, or
from the old French boudan for sausage itself from the Latin.
But tell us, I don't have a personal stake in this,

(21:56):
Sure you don't, sure you go? Yes? Uh. And when
the seventeenth century rolled around, puddings were still largely savory.
Black puddings were meat based, while white puddings were sausage.
Cation things are stomach linings filled with suet, cereal and
bread crumbs, often flavored, and there were sweet varieties of

(22:19):
white puddings. Here's the sixteen fifteen recipe for black pudding
from the English housewife. Take the blood of a whole
hog whilst it is warm, and steep it in a
court or more of great oatale grits, and at the
end of three days, with your hands, take the grits
out of the blood and drain them clean. Then put
to those grits more than a quart of the best

(22:39):
cream warmed on the fire. Then take mother of time, parsley, spinach,
suckery in dive, sorrel, and strawberry leaves of each a
few chopped exceeding small, and mix them with the grits,
and also a little finnel seed finally beaten. Then add
a little pepper, clothes and mace, salt, and great store
of suet, finally shread and well beaten. Then there with

(23:03):
fill your frames farms, I think frames, some kind of device,
and foil them as hath been before described. Yeah. I
love these old timey recipes, but they can trip me
up because I'm not entirely sure some of them. That

(23:23):
means yeah, yeah, the word that Annie was we we
we took a break to discuss it off off air.
But um, yeah, it's it's it's written as there with
failure farms f A r M E. S. I suspect
that someone just made a mistake in copying out from
one of these old books. Um and and it was frames.

(23:47):
But but maybe this is a device that I'm unfamiliar with. Yes, listeners,
I know a lot of you have some old timing
recipe books. So if you know, oh, we should pay,
and we should paying. Julia Skinner, doctor, Julia Skinner. Of
course she's so cool. She's so cool. Um. Yes. Well.

(24:11):
Also around this time, eating black pudding became kind of
controversial and European Christian religious circles. M hm uh. The
debate was fierce in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, further
stoked by Sir Isaac Newton's outspoken distaste for black pudding
and refusal to eat it for breakfast. Um, and so

(24:34):
he got roped into this whole argument. It's sort of
a non religious support, uh in this religious argument, like
the side that was saying we shouldn't needed see Sir
Isaac Newton won't even though it wasn't really really was
this argument right? Uh. In sixteen fifty two, Thomas Barlow
published The Trial of Black Pudding, And it actually has

(24:56):
a really long title after that, but I did not
have the strength to type it out, but you can
look it up. Um. And in this he argued that
black pudding was a violation under Hebrew law and Christian
exemptions as given by the Apostles. So yeah, it was
this whole There was so much debate about this um
over in the American colonies as well. Um In a

(25:21):
Puritan minister by the name of Increase Mather, which is
a great name. Um, he published a pamphlet called A
Case of Conscience concerning Eating of Blood considered an answered
he reckoned it was okay. He was like, he was like, well,
we don't like follow every rule in Leviticus anyway. Uh

(25:45):
So if like those are okay, then this is okay.
And also like, don't get too worked up about the
blood of Christ because that's like a specific sacrament and
it's not saying that all blood is a sacrament. That's
something differ. He had this whole thing. Wow, yeah, wow.
Multiple pamphlets and works on the reality of black pudding okay, Okay.

(26:14):
By the seventeenth century, the British had savory puddings as
well as sweet puddings that these sweet puddings were usually
a mixture of flour, sugar, and nuts. Um. Both may
have been specifically boiled in special pudding bags, which was
news to me. I'd never heard about this, but m hmmm.
And this is also where some of the linguistic confusion

(26:36):
comes in, because by the end of the eighteenth century,
traditional English puddings rarely contained meat um. Many were made
of flour among other ingredients, and were often cake like.
Many traditional English Christmas puddings stemmed from this. A part
of this whole thing may have been due to the
cooking technology available in the homes of average folks and

(26:57):
specifically oven temperature UM and the seventeenth century invention of yeah,
the pudding cough, which allowed for folks to ditch the
savory meat casing if they wanted to um. Some people
switched to pastry instead. Yes, um and different episode but
custard okay, including savory varieties followed a similar historical path

(27:23):
that we've been going down on this timeline. However, the
real forking of the path in terms of the English
use of the word pudding versus the American use took
place in the eighteen forties when a lot of Americans
did not need to cook pudding, um and putting with
something that was perhaps seen as a meal meant to
stretch when food times were tight, um, and Americans had

(27:49):
so many other options. At the same time, an English
chemist named Alfred Bird invented a custard powder that could
be used in place of eggs as the thickening agent,
and Americans really took to it, using that or corn
starch for their custody desserts, especially for those who didn't
have ready access to eggs. And it was interesting because

(28:09):
I had a whole paper about like Americans going west
and not having eggs and using these kinds of things. Um.
And again this type of pudding is a separate episode.
But oh yeah, there's a little a little insight, a
little teaser for whenever we get to it. But in

(28:30):
the meantime, back to save re meat puddings. The first
records of beefsteak and mutton puddings started popping up in
the eighteenth century, then jumping ahead and back into the
world of dungeons and dragons. Uh. Gary Guy GaX introduced
the black pudding monster UM in the first edition of

(28:52):
Dungeons Dragons in it is, yes, an owze type of
monster um that consumes to much everything except stone, and
it was going to consume you it but it tried,
it did try, and then you destroyed him. Yeah, there
you go. Black pudding. I have to go look and

(29:14):
I have to go look back through my notes because
there's several puddings. I'm not sure if I used a
black pudding, but I definitely used a pudding for that
first battle. I didn't I didn't look into it too hard,
but now I'm really I'm really curious, like how how
this made its way into the monster Manual, Like what
the origin of that is? Um? And again if anyone knows,

(29:39):
please right in please. I love this wide range of
request we give our listeners, and you you always answered
the calls that we appreciate it. Health codes and standards
in the nineteen seventies and eighties made it harder for
smaller businesses to get their hands on fresh blood, making
it harder for them to make black pudding and leading

(30:00):
to some closures. B s E or mad cow disease
further put a dent in demand and led to the
UK banning the collection of fresh blood. Meanwhile, Denmark was
able to produce powdered blood, a product that was easier
to transport and obtain as compared to the fresh variety UM.
Even after the band on fresh blood was lifted, many

(30:21):
smaller slaughter houses that collected fresh blood and or producers
of blood sausages never really recovered. On top of that,
black pudding has gotten somewhat of a bad rap in
places where it isn't traditional UM and is sometimes called
something that is gross, even up until when a popular

(30:45):
map was circulating with the most quote disgusting foods of
Europe that included black pudding UM I personally enjoyed. In
nine Washington Post article where author Cecily Neighbors described of
trying black putting on several occasions on a trip to
Scotland and being met with a lot of deflections when

(31:08):
she asked what was in it, where they'd be like,
oh this this just know whatever, it's fine whatever. Um.
So she finally looked it up and discovered the secret
ingredient they've been hiding from her was blood. Here's a
quote these Scots, I thought, I think they're so tough.
Wait till I tell them what's in hot dogs? I

(31:31):
love that goodness. Yes, so this author really really enjoyed them. Um.
But I do also understand the kind of hesitance to
tell tourists, especially what what is it there after they've
had it already. Um. But anyway, that was a common
theme in this article of people not knowing what was

(31:54):
in black pudding, even people who may have grown up
eating it not being sure what was there. M But
with the nose detail movement, demand is growing, and it's
worth noting in some places like Ireland, while it's had
its ups and downs, when it comes to demand, it's
never gone away. Yeah yeah. And speaking of sustainable eating

(32:19):
and the nose to tail kind of thing. Um. More recently,
a student in the UK worked with local breweries to
produce a black pudding made half from oats and half
from a spent beer grains um with the idea of
reducing waste. They said it tasted really good and kind
of beery makes sense. Um. In a UK artist by

(32:47):
the name of John O'Shea put together an art installation
slash like science and economics experiment called black Market pudding.
M hm, and this was intended to call attention to
butchery practices. Um. And uh let me let me give
you a quote from the exhibit page. Um, black market

(33:10):
pudding is manufactured using blood taken from a living pig.
It proposes a cyclical business model to ensure a uniquely
fair deal for farmer, animal and consumer. Through a routine
veterinary procedure, blood is obtained from the animal in a humane,
healthy and safe way. Producers are then compensated for costs
associated with breeding and maintaining the animals that are kept

(33:31):
outside of the traditional food chain. Consumers pay a premium
market price for the pudding and the reassurance that no
animals are harmed in the making of this product. Mhm. Yeah,
he actually created and sold black market pudding in the
Netherlands in Poland a couple of years before the exhibit
went up. Wow. Okay yeah. Um. Also, just to end on,

(33:56):
I guess a really weird note, um, in, a British
journalist by the name of Michael Mosley made a black
pudding with his own blood. Um. During this whole bout
of research he was doing into the history and like
modern science of blood. Huh. Yep, that's h okay. Sure

(34:22):
he was like, blood's really cool. Yeah, I'm gonna use
mine for black pudding. Did he eat it? Yeah? Oh
well all right then. Wow. I got a lot of
thoughts that I feel like, I think we could talk
about it. I'm not I'm not personally familiar with with

(34:45):
this personality, but apparently he is a former doctor of
some kind, um who's been working with I think the
BBC for like decades. Um And yeah, uh yeah, if
you have any opinions about that, right and let us know.
But but for sure, I like doing this episode really

(35:06):
did bring me back to the Bouddhan episode. Um. And
I know I'm still not pronouncing it correctly. I'm sorry.
Um uh my French is terrible. My New Orleans French
is even worse. So um but yeah, yeah, because I
I feel bad because in that episode, I you know,
it was kind of like, hey, we're talking about how
the sausage is literally made and like that's that is

(35:27):
kind of gross. So so sorry if this makes anyone squeamish,
and like, although you know, like I do think that
that's a that's a fair like like warning to put up.
I I think I went on too hard about how
like some people find it gross and and that's the
thing that I uh really try to not do about

(35:52):
food because like because food, you know, like like for
for everything that you look at and go like, oh
that's unusual and and and I can't age and even
trying to eat it, like that's like someone else's favorite
food or it's a delicacy or it's like part of
their families culture and you know. So yeah, I think
that's a good a good thing to keep in mind

(36:15):
whenever you're like, oh, this food is gross, Like why
do you think it's gross? And something? It's just like
you don't like it personally, like I don't like mayonnaise.
That's I don't like mayonnaise. But like, you know, keeping
those sort of cultural oh I don't like pudding enough
seems weird because it's not something that you grew up
with or something you're familiar with. Yeah, you know, maybe

(36:36):
just think twice before you call out something as gross
that's just not in your history right right, that you're
just unfamiliar with. I Uh. One of my one of
my favorite breakfasts is called leftover pizza. Um and apparently,
according to my friend Cody. Um, that's something that international humans,
people from outside the United States think. It is just

(36:58):
the absolute grossest thing in America. Really. Oh no, listeners,
I really want you to write it like that. There's
something so good about like the breakfast cold pizza, or
even like the three m I'm hungry and I know
there's pizza. Yeah, you don't bother to heat it up.

(37:20):
Oh my god, I mean, reheating pizza is real tricky. Anyways,
it's never going to be exactly as good as it
was the first time. But there's something there's something so
good about cold pizza. Sorry, sorry that if that's anyone's line. Yeah,
people are shutting off right now. I know. There's plenty
of things that my international friends have told me about

(37:42):
American food in my habits in particular, that don't doesn't
fly with them, but they're always really polite about it. Yes,
so listeners, please write in about that. Yeah, please please please.
In the meantime, we do have some listener mail for you,
we do, but first we've got one more quick break
for a word from our sponsors. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,

(38:14):
thank you, And we're back with more n so I
couldn't do it, but I've had that song nice day
for a red wedding entire time. Yeah, all right, day
for black pudding, you know. Oh no, so that was yeah,

(38:42):
Now that's that's great. Thank you, Thank you. As always,
it's doing your best to go along with my wild ideas. Heck,
all right, all right, Brian Route with the subject line
of what other countries think of as American foods um quote.

(39:03):
As soon as I saw this title, I thought of
the wonderful host over at Saber. I don't know if
you've already made an episode like this about how the
rest of the world perceives our food, but if you have,
it's worth a sequel. I know you have at least
mentioned some of these in the past, like the Japanese
tradition of KFC on Christmas. My particular favorite Fox ethnic
dish is the cringe worthy American style pizza from Poland,

(39:25):
consisting of a cheese pizza with a can of creamed
corn poured table side. Uh. This was not by far
the strangest victual amongst the list. This would be really
interesting because we have talked about this before and given
the conversation we just had about like viewing things as

(39:45):
weird are growths that are just not something that you're
familiar with. I do find it interesting that and in
my experience, a lot of the dishes I've had in
other countries that were American style did involve especially pizza, right, Um,

(40:06):
which is cool. Yeah. I don't think I've maybe i've
had corn on pizza like a like a California Pizza
kitchen kind of situation. Um, but I had it in Japan.
I think this style was called American style, but it
had a bunch of stuff on it. But corn was
one of the things, and it's a very popular pizza there. Yeah,

(40:31):
and it was good, Like, yeah, it was one of
those things though that I was kind of like, huh, corn.
It reminds me of the Mary Kate and Ashley song
put it on a pizza. It's been a long time
since I bought up America. Yeah. I was about to
say this is someone just someone out there is just

(40:52):
like Bengo. Finally yes, yes, Oh what an episode that was? Um, well,
Jesse wrote, have you guys done an episode on food
competitions or even food ranking shows? Be interesting? If you

(41:13):
got an interview with it's a Southern thing from YouTube.
The guy does some incredibly entertaining food ranking episodes, but
in general, this whole food challenge thing would be interesting
to delve into for a podcast. Now it would be
uh and we are interested in doing it. I think
we're both a little nervous. Yeah, gonna be a lot

(41:35):
of details, but yeah, yeah, our numbers section would just
be the chart. I am really curious about the history
of it, though, I wonder. I feel like humans have
probably been doing that forever. Yeah. Well, I mean, you
know in terms of like the like County fair style,

(41:56):
like oh, this is the biggest potato ever, or like
whatever it is that it is, um, right, has probably
been going on in every community forever. Um. But yeah,
like like at what point it got formalized and um
and right, just like I don't know, like something about
even like the history of ranking, like why do humans
have this drive to like make that list? Yeah, it

(42:22):
will be an examination into humanity, is what I'm hearing. Yeah, yes, yes,
well for sure it's been on our list and we
will get to it one day some day. Absolutely. Yes.
In the meantime, thanks that both of those listeners for writing.
If you would like to write to us, we would

(42:43):
love to hear from you. Our email is Hello at
saber pod dot com. We're also on social media. You
can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at saver
pod and we do hope to hear from you. Saver
is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to
my heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and

(43:04):
Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope
that lots more good things are coming your way