Food

Boudin Blanc (French White Sausage)

Christmas · French · Pork · Sausage

Boudin Blanc (French White Sausage)
Prep 1 hour 15 minutes (temperature discipline throughout)
Cook 30 minutes poaching, plus browning to serve
Serves About 8.5 lb / 3.8 kg — 30 to 35 sausages of 110–130 g
Level Hard

French boudin blanc is a pale, soft, delicate poached sausage of finely worked white meat bound with milk and eggs — the sausage of the French Christmas Eve supper, browned gently in butter and served with apples. The diagnostic is the binder: no blood (that is boudin noir) and, in the protected Rethel version, no bread, flour or starch either. Egg white sets at about 60–65 °C and traps the milk and meat in a fine gel, which is what makes it white and tender rather than springy like a frankfurter. It is not the Cajun sausage of the same name. In Louisiana, “boudin blanc” means white rice boudin — pork, liver, the trinity and a great deal of cooked rice — and the collection’s two recipes called Boudin Blanc are that Louisiana sausage. This is the French one. It follows the specification for Boudin blanc de Rethel, the Ardennes town whose pork-only version has been a protected geographical indication: 55–68% pork, 10–20% whole egg, 20–30% milk, nothing starchy. The work is keeping a wet, egg-rich paste cold enough to stay smooth, and poaching it below a simmer. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from the Rethel IGP specification and is untested.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight

  • 1476 g (3 lb 4 oz) lean pork — boneless ham or shoulder, sinew removed — 65%
  • 454 g (1 lb) pork belly, skinless — 20%
  • 340 g (12.0 oz) hard pork back fat — 15%

BINDERS (% of meat weight; IGP limits)

  • 568 g whole eggs, about 11 large, beaten (gives about 15% of the mix; IGP 10–20%) (25%)
  • 953 g whole milk, ice-cold (about 25% of the mix; IGP 20–30%) (42%)

SEASONING (% of meat weight)

  • 52 g fine salt (2.3%)
  • 6.8 g white pepper (0.3%)
  • 3.4 g quatre épices (white pepper, nutmeg, clove, ginger) (0.15%)
  • 1.1 g nutmeg (0.05%)
  • 30–32 mm natural hog casing, about 25 ft (7.5 m)

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

  1. In the collection: milk and eggs. The blood sausage it partners on the French Christmas table is Boudin Noir (French Blood Sausage). Not to be confused with the collection’s Cajun rice boudins, Boudin Blanc - 1 and Boudin Blanc - 2. The German white-sausage technique is the same discipline as Weisswurst (Münchner Weißwurst).
  2. Chill everything: meat, fat, milk, eggs, grinder parts and the food-processor bowl all go in the freezer for 30 minutes. This sausage is an emulsion with a lot of water in it, and it breaks if the paste climbs above about 12 °C / 54 °F.
  3. Grind: grind the lean, belly and fat through a 3 mm (1/8”) plate, then again through the same plate. Two fine passes make the paste easier to finish smooth.
  4. Emulsify in batches: in a food processor, process a third of the meat with a third of the salt for 30 seconds until sticky. Add a third of the eggs, process, then stream in a third of the cold milk with the motor running, along with the spices. Process to a smooth, glossy paste. Check the temperature after each batch; if it reaches 10 °C / 50 °F, stop and chill for 15 minutes. Combine the batches in a cold bowl.
  5. Test a quenelle — the decision point: poach a spoonful in water at 75 °C for 8 minutes. It should be pale, tender and hold its shape, with no fat or water on the plate. If it weeps fat, the paste got warm and broke: chill it hard and process again briefly. If it is bland, add salt now.
  6. Stuff: fill the 30–32 mm hog casing loosely — the paste is soft and expands in the poach — and twist into 12–14 cm links, or tie with string.
  7. Poach — never boil: lower into water held at 75–80 °C / 167–176 °F and poach about 25–30 minutes, until the centre reaches 71 °C / 160 °F. Boiling bursts the casings and makes the texture grainy. Do not prick them.
  8. Shock and chill: lift into ice water for 10 minutes, then dry and refrigerate. They keep 3–4 days, or freeze.
  9. Serve: brown slowly in butter over low heat, 8–10 minutes, turning, until golden and hot through; or wrap in buttered paper and warm in the oven, which is gentler on the casing. Serve with apples sautéed in butter, or mashed potatoes.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The backbone is the INAO single document for the IGP “Boudin blanc de Rethel” (2016 modification), read in full. It fixes the composition — fresh pork only (ham, shoulder, belly and hard fat; sow meat and cutting trimmings banned), meat 55–68%, whole hen’s eggs 10–20% (no powdered or frozen egg), cow’s milk 20–30% (no reconstituted milk; raw milk only if brought to the boil first) — and forbids starch, flour, breadcrumb, colourants and phosphates; starch in the finished sausage must be at most 0.4%. Here, meat comes to about 60% of the mix, egg about 15%, milk about 25%. The seasoning, grind and poaching are not in the specification and are standard charcuterie practice. Untested.

Why it is white and tender. The specification gives the chemistry itself: “the proteins of egg white are albumins which coagulate at low temperature (between +60 and +65 °C) and form a gel that traps the components of the product”, and that gel is what gives Boudin blanc de Rethel its pale colour and soft, cohesive texture. A frankfurter is set by salt-extracted meat protein and is springy; a boudin blanc is set largely by egg and is yielding.

Where boudin blanc came from. White puddings of meat, milk and grain are old across Europe, and many French boudins blancs, especially the Paris style, still use chicken or veal with breadcrumb or a bread-and-milk panade. Rethel’s is the starch-free, pork-only kind. The specification’s own story: in the seventeenth century an army officer named Chamarande fled to Rethel after fighting a duel against Cardinal Richelieu’s orders and opened a pork butcher’s; his grandson, who died in 1848, “really perfected the recipe” in the middle of the nineteenth century; and in 1901 the town had eight charcutiers, four named Chamarande. The same document elsewhere says the recipe was “finalised in the middle of the eighteenth century”, so its dates do not agree with each other. The district’s three towns called Porcien, from the Gallo-Roman pagus porciensis, “pig country”, are offered as evidence of the area’s long pig trade.

The Cajun name collision. Louisiana’s boudin blanc is white because it has no blood, as opposed to boudin rouge; it is pork, liver and rice and has nothing else in common with the French sausage. Both are traditional; they simply share two words.

Variations. The Rethel IGP allows mushroom, forestier (wild mushrooms only) and truffled versions, the truffle being Tuber melanosporum or Tuber brumale. Elsewhere in France, chicken or veal versions, versions with onion cooked in milk, and Christmas versions with port, cognac or chopped truffle. Cocktail sizes in sheep casing.

Sourcing and gear. A food processor is essential. A probe thermometer, both in the paste and in the poaching water, is the most important tool. Whole milk works; cream makes it richer but outside the Rethel rule.

Still open. No Rethel charcutier’s working formula is published; the spice blend here is a standard French white-sausage seasoning, not Rethel’s own.

Read more on the site. Cajun and Creole