Blood is used as food in many religions and cultures, often in combination with meat. The blood may be in the form of blood sausage or other solidified form, 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. This is a product from domesticated animals, obtained at a place and time where the blood can run into a container and be swiftly consumed or processed. In many cultures, the animal is slaughtered. In some cultures and religions, blood is a taboo food.
Blood consists predominantly of protein and water, and is sometimes called "liquid meat" because its composition is similar to that of lean meat. Blood collected hygienically can be used for human consumption; otherwise it is converted to blood meal. Certain fractions of animal blood are used in human medicine.
Methods of preparation
Blood sausage
Blood sausage 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, rice, barley and oatmeal. Varieties include biroldo, black pudding, blood tongue, blutwurst, drisheen, kishka (kaszanka), morcilla, moronga, mustamakkara, sundae, verivorst, and many types of boudin.
Pancakes
Blood pancakes are encountered in Galicia (filloas), Scandinavia, and the Baltic; for example, Swedish blodplättar, Finnish veriohukainen, and Estonian veripannkoogid.
Soups, stews and sauces
Blood soups and stews, which use blood as part of the broth, include czernina, dinuguan, haejangguk, mykyrokka, pig's organ soup, tiết canh and svartsoppa.
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.
Solidified Blood can also be used as a solid ingredient, either by allowing it to congeal before use, or by cooking it to accelerate the process. Blood curd is a dish typically found in Asia that consists of cooled and hardened animal blood.
In China, "blood tofu" () is most often made with pig's or duck's blood, although chicken's or cow's blood may also be used. The blood is allowed to congeal and simply cut into rectangular pieces and cooked. This dish is also known in Java as saren, made with chicken's or pig's blood. Blood tofu is found in curry mee as well as the Sichuan dish, (). Chinese people use pig blood, tofu, and vegetables to make a healthy soup. This soup has a reputation as a healthy and tasty meal in China.
In Hungary, when a pig is slaughtered in the morning, the blood is fried with onions and served for breakfast. , as it is called, is made from pig's blood and onions, often flavoured with paprika and marjoram.
Chicken blood has been used alongside organ meats to combat the anemia crisis in Peru.
In the Philippines, the street food made from grilled chicken blood is called "betamax", owing to its boxy shape, which resembles Betamax tapes. It is typically sold alongside grilled pork and chicken isaw (intestines) and other types of Filipino barbecue.
In Korea, blood curd is typically made of cattle blood and is often used as an ingredient for different kinds of soups and stews, such as hangover soup.
In Tibet, congealed yak's blood is a traditional food.
In Vietnamese cuisine, pig blood curd is used in soup based noodle dishes such as Bún bò Huế or Bánh canh, bún riêu, tiết canh and cháo lòng.
Raw In some cases, blood is used as an ingredient without any additional preparation. Raw blood is not commonly consumed by itself, but may be used as an addition to drinks or other dishes. One example is the drinking of seal blood which is traditionally believed by the Inuit to bring health benefits.Borré, Kristen. "Seal Blood, Inuit Blood, and Diet: A Biocultural Model of Physiology and Cultural Identity." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 5 (1991): 48–62.
Nutrition bars Russia and ex-USSR countries produce sweet nutrition bars containing cattle blood, known under the generic name Hematogen; originally created for treating anemia, they are also used like regular sweets nowadays.
Religious consumption of blood The Catholic Church, as well as the Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox, and some Anglican churches, believe that in the sacrament of the Eucharist, the participants consume the real blood and body of Jesus Christ. The post-communion prayer of the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer describes the meal as "spiritual food". Many other Christian denominations symbolically consume the Eucharist.
The cult of saint Thomas Becket in England included the drinking of "water of Saint Thomas", a mix of water and the remains of the martyr's blood miraculously multiplied. The procedure was frowned upon by the more orthodox due to the similarities with the Eucharist.
Cultural and religious considerations
Some cultures consider blood to be a taboo form of food. The taboos may be rooted in the fact that consuming greater quantities of blood may cause iron overload in some genetically predisposed individuals.
In Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam forbid the consumption of blood. In Judaism, the following passages from the Torah are relevant:
Leviticus 7:26 "You may not partake of any blood from a fowl or an animal in all your dwellings." Deuteronomy 12:16 "However, you must not consume the blood; you must spill it on the ground like water." Deuteronomy 12:23–24 "However, be resolute not to consume the blood, for blood is the animal's life-force. You must not consume it; you must spill it onto the ground like water."
Blood and its by-products are forbidden in Islam, in the Qurʼan, surah 5, al-Ma'idah, verse 3. In the Christian New Testament, blood was forbidden by the Apostolic Decree due to banning sacrifice of animals before idols (), and is still forbidden among Eastern Orthodox Churches.Karl Josef von Hefele's 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."
The Catholic Church determined in the Council of Florence in 1438 that
Dishes
Africa Among the Maasai people, drinking blood from cattle is a part of the traditional diet, especially after special occasions involving a loss of blood such as ritual bloodletting or giving birth.
Cow blood is also consumed by the Bahima people.
The Herero people consumed cow blood with sour milk.
Americas As in Europe, several varieties of blood sausage are also popular in Mexico (moronga), Quebec (boudin), Newfoundland and Labrador and the southwest United States, Chile (prietas, ñache), Brazil (chouriço), Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, and Puerto Rico (morcilla).
Brazil In Brazil, the traditional Portuguese dish known as cabidela (see above) is also eaten, as well a stew made of pork blood and offal called sarapatel.
Colombia In the western region of Santander Colombia, a dish called pepitoria is made from rice cooked in goat blood.
Mexico Mexicans from certain regions eat goat's stomach stuffed with pork blood and vegetables as a delicacy.
Peru In Peru, clotted chicken blood is fried with chili peppers and Welsh onion. This dish is called sangrecita.
Ecuador Yaguarlocro is a potato soup made with sprinklings of goat's blood.
Asia China
In China and some regions of Southeast Asia, coagulated chicken, duck, goose or pig blood, known in Chinese as "blood tofu" () is used in soups. In Taiwan, pig's blood cake () is made of pork blood and sticky rice. It is fried or steamed as a snack or cooked in a hot pot.
India In the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, stir-fried lamb blood is a common dish for breakfast and lunch. When prepared alone it is called (). More commonly it is stir-fried with lamb stomach and intestines with spices like ginger, garlic, cloves, cinnamon, red chili powder, green chilies, coriander powder, cumin, shallots and grated coconut. This dish is very common in the Kongu Nadu region as a Breakfast delicacy and Madurai region of Tamil Nadu.
In the coastal Konkan region of India, Sorpotel, a dish of Portuguese origin is commonly cooked that includes parboiled meat and offal which is cooked in a spicy and vinegary sauce. Some people also use the animals' blood for boiling the curry. Sorpotel is primarily made by Catholics of Goa, Mangalore and Bombay East Indians of Mumbai. In Kumaon, a spicy dish called Luvash is made by pan frying lamb blood with pahadi ghee.
Indonesia
In Indonesia, especially the Batak tribe in North Sumatra, pig's blood is used as an ingredient and sauce mixed with andaliman (Zanthoxylum acantophodium) for a cuisine named Sangsang (read saksang). In Balinese cuisine, pork blood is sometimes added into lawar dish, a mixture of vegetables, coconut and minced meat mixed with rich herbs and spices to create lawar merah (red lawar).
In Joshua Oppenheimer's film The Look of Silence, several of the anti-Communist militias active in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 claim that drinking blood from their victims is what prevented them going mad.
Korea
In Korea, blood as food is known as seonji ( ; derived from the Manchu word senggi () meaning "blood"). Coagulated cattle seonji and dried radish greens are added to the beef legbone broth in order to make seonji-guk (blood curd soup). Sundae, a blood sausage made generally by boiling or steaming cow or pig's intestines that are stuffed with various ingredients, such as pig's blood, cellophane noodles, kimchi, scallions, etc.
Nepal In northern region of Nepal, Gyuma a blood sausage is a popular dish commonly eaten by locals. It is made of yak's blood and meat. The fillings also include buck wheat flour and other spices. The sausage is also used in lentils or prepared in stir fry dishes.
People of Newar community also consume popular dish called "cho hee," which means blood that is prepared by steaming the blood with some local spices. It is consumed by most of the locals in Patan, Kathmandu, Bhaktapur area of Nepal.
Philippines