The idea of feasting on blood may conjure visions of vampires for anyone with a delicate stomach, but from China’s consumption of fresh cobra’s blood as an aphrodisiac to the European taste for blood sausages, animal blood is popular around the world. Both Asian and Western culinary cultures feature blood recipes deeply rooted in local traditions that have become gourmet delicacies or sought-after for supposed medicinal purposes. In China, for instance, deer’s blood is thought to boost longevity. “My first impulse is to say: ‘Why not consume the blood?’” says Miranda Brown, professor of Chinese studies in the department of Asian languages and cultures at the University of Michigan in the US. “Obviously, there are places that don’t – the Islamic world, for example – but I can’t imagine there is any part of the animal that the Chinese didn’t use, traditionally. Animals can be expensive to raise, and you don’t want things to go to waste.” According to Brown, consuming blood products isn’t just a matter of getting protein in the diet, improving health or curing specific ills, but also for simple gastronomical satisfaction – the pleasure of eating something exceptionally savoury. “I suspect that people like the flavour; it tastes good,” she says. “Flavour and texture are important.” Taiwanese pig’s blood cakes, for example, are popular street food snacks served on a stick in local night markets. Made with sticky rice drenched in pig’s blood, the cake is usually steamed, soaked in a sweet soy broth and covered in peanut flour. It’s chewy, crunchy, very sweet and can be served chopped into cubes. Popular Chinese blood treats include a highly nutritious Cantonese-style rice congee with coagulated pig’s blood shaped into tofu-like cubes, known as blood tofu or blood pudding. Congealed duck, chicken or cow’s blood can be used with noodles, herbs and hotpot soups. The most disgusting and shocking foods from around the world Chinese pork blood sausages, the food closest to the Western tradition, are often seasoned with spices, while snake’s blood wine is made by blending the reptile’s blood and bile with alcohol. In Korea, cattle blood curd, a jellylike coagulated concoction, is used in stews, while Tibetans favour congealed yak’s blood and Indians have a taste for stir-fried lamb’s blood. Thailand has several blood dishes featuring noodles in pig’s or cow’s blood, including pig’s blood curd soup for breakfast, a rice-blood mix wrapped in a banana leaf, and a spicy salad drenched in raw buffalo’s blood. Trinh Khanh Linh, a Vietnamese culinary history doctoral student at the University of Michigan, says there is no specific reason for the enjoyment of blood food around the world. “There is not really one reason ‘why’ for the general public. Some people consume blood dishes for medicinal or wellness purposes, and other people enjoy the buttery texture as well as the salty, iron and sweet taste,” she says. “For the Vietnamese, the use of blood as an ingredient is mostly due to our frugal lifestyle. Recent wars and famines have left the Vietnamese with a strong sense of responsibility for our resources. We typically try to prepare or preserve every part of a harvested animal, including its blood.” For large family gatherings, such as Lunar New Year festivities, Vietnamese people often butcher a whole chicken, duck or pig to make meat dishes, bone-broth soup or noodle soup, and blood cakes. They also use the organ meats. “There is also a dish called tiet canh [raw blood pudding], which used to be enjoyed more by older generations but has fallen out of fashion due to the health risks it poses,” she says. Possible threats include parasites and diseases carried in raw blood and flesh. Blood foods are less popular in Japan. Japanese chef Taro Shimosaka, of the Antidoto Bistrot wine and sake fusion restaurant in Milan, Italy, recalls that in the past turtle’s blood was given to the sick. “Now, you don’t have it any more, but we do eat boiled dark pieces of tuna fish so full of blood they’re black, which we enjoy fresh and heavily seasoned,” he says. The trouble with blood is that it spoils fast, so it gets dropped from food systems when storage is an issue, and especially when industrial processing comes in Eugene Anderson, expert on medieval Chinese and Mongol cuisine Eugene Anderson, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, is an expert on medieval Chinese and Mongol cuisine and a blood food enthusiast to boot. “Blood is good food that is eaten pretty widely because it’s the perfect food, even better than milk, given it has to carry all the nutrients [round the body],” he says. In his book A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era As Seen in Hu Sihui’s Yinshan Zhengyao , co-written with Paul Buell, Anderson includes a recipe for noodles made from blood mixed with wheat flour, and flavoured with Chinese radish, basil and smartweed. The recipe is from the Mongol court’s book on dietary principles, Yinshan Zhengyao , assembled by dietitian Hu Sihui in 1330. Anderson also highlights an 18th-century Chinese cookbook that features a recipe for blood noodles recommended for older people in which coagulated chicken’s blood is cut to noodle size and cooked with wheat noodles in chicken broth. He says less blood food is consumed in the West these days because of modern production requirements. “The trouble with blood is that it spoils fast, so it gets dropped from food systems when storage is an issue, and especially when industrial processing comes in,” he explains. Yet some blood foods have survived, even if mainly as niche dishes served at high-end dining establishments, or as traditional delicacies made by grandmothers in rural areas where ancient traditions live on. In Alaska, for example, seal’s blood, with its much-touted reinvigorating properties, is a popular treat. Blood sausages were first made in Europe thousands of years ago, with fresh, uncoagulated pig’s blood on the day of slaughter. Each country has its own variant. In France, they’re called boudin noir; in Spain, morcilla; England, black pudding; and Germany, blutwurst. Blood soups, curds and pancakes made with blood instead of milk, liqueurs and creams are also popular. The French keep the blood of game to make elaborate sauces such as salmis, used in sophisticated dishes. Blood food recipes have been devised by many Michelin-starred chefs in Europe. Paolo Griffa, of the one-Michelin-star Petit Royal at the Grand Hotel Royal in Courmayeur, Italy, enjoys using the ingredient in his dishes. It has many uses, he says, with high protein levels, and a sweet and salty taste. “It’s an elegant and structured ingredient with low fat that is used to tie together other nutrients,” he explains. In Italy, sanguinaccio – meaning “ugly blood” and hailing from ancient Rome – is a l arge salami made with chocolate and pig’s blood and is believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac. In villages where cooks preserve the recipes of their grandmothers, sanguinaccio is still made from fresh pig’s blood, salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, grated garlic and herbs. Sanguinaccio is thought to be a tonic for sick and anaemic people, women in labour and couples trying to have a baby. Italians have a saying: “Blood calls blood, it keeps the hormones up and the veins pumping.” Many things associated with blood also have a sexual connotation in Italy: if a woman makes a man “feel blood”, it means that she physically arouses him. “Pigs have always been the primary source of food; you eat everything of the pig,” says Gianfranco Bonacci, an Italian cultural expert. “Before, every family kept and butchered pigs in their backyard. My grandmother had one, and the slaughter was a feast. Everything changed with tighter food hygiene rules; blood foods became less commonly eaten.” Bonacci’s grandmother used to add chocolate and candied fruits to the blood, making it semi-solid, and served it in bread rolls. Italians also make a sweet cake sanguinaccio of dark chocolate pudding during carnival time using pig’s blood. Mixed with rice, cinnamon, pistachio and lemon peel, it was once used as cake filling or stuffed inside a pig’s gut to make a chocolate salami. The bloody and sweet dessert paste can still be savoured in isolated towns as a dip for biscuits.