Mustamakkara
Blood sausage of Tampere, the city’s culinary pride since the nineteenth century, when the workers of the textile mills bought it hot from the market women of the Tammelantori (Tampere’s market square). It is eaten with lingonberry jam, standing at the market.
| Fresh pig’s blood | 400 ml |
| Cooked barley groats | 250 g |
| Rye flour | 100 g |
| Fatback, diced | 150 g |
| Onion, sliced and cooked | 100 g |
| Fine salt | 15 g |
| Ground black pepper | 3 g |
| Dried marjoram | 3 g |
| Allspice | 1 g |
| Beef or synthetic casing (Ø 70–90 mm) | — |
- Preparing the groats: Cook the pearl barley in salted water until tender. Drain and cool.
- Preparing the garnishes: Cut the fatback into small dice. Fry the onion in lard until translucent.
- Mixing: Beat the blood to loosen it. Add the barley groats, rye flour (which gives a black colour), fatback, onion, and seasonings. Mix well.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the wide casing without packing too tightly. Form puddings of 20–25 cm. Tie securely.
- Poaching: Cook in barely simmering water (75–80 °C) for 1½–2 hours. Prick if bubbles form.
- Cooling: Leave to cool in the liquid, then refrigerate.
- Serving: Reheat in the oven or on the grill until the skin is crisp. Cut into thick slices. Serve, without fail, with puolukkahillo (lingonberry jam) and a glass of cold milk.
The word mustamakkara means ‘black sausage’ in Finnish (musta, black, and makkara, sausage), and this blood pudding is inseparable from Tampere, the former industrial capital of southern Finland. The association between the product and the city dates back at least to the nineteenth century, when workers in the textile mills bought it hot from itinerant market women for the midday meal. The Tammelantori, the city’s central market, remains the place where it is sold and eaten according to recipes handed from stand to stand over several generations.
Rye flour, absent from most European blood puddings, is the ingredient that gives the mustamakkara its particularly intense black colour and its grainy texture. It acts at once as binder and as colourant, producing a visually darker result than the British black pudding or the Swedish blodpudding, which rest on oats or barley groats without rye flour. The barley groats, present alongside, bring body and additional chew.
The serving obeys a ritual that the people of Tampere defend with the same conviction as the Munichois defend their weißwurst: the mustamakkara is eaten hot, in thick slices, with puolukkahillo (lingonberry jam) and a glass of cold milk. The frank sharpness of the lingonberry cuts the richness of the blood and the fat. The combination is locally regarded as an indivisible unit, and any attempt at substitution provokes lively discussion.
The culinary rivalry between Tampere and other large Finnish cities, particularly Turku (the former capital before Helsinki), feeds a long-documented humorous folklore. The mustamakkara serves there as both target and emblem: Turku readily calls it a provincial curiosity, while Tampere has made it a marker of local identity. The two principal producers, Tapola and Savupojat, keep their sales concentrated in Tampere and its region.
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