The Gh'è minga Gourmand: Blood Egg Substitute

The Gh'è minga Gourmand: Blood Egg Substitute

Eggs serve several purposes in baking. They contribute to the structure, color, flavor and consistency of baked goods in the following ways:

    Binding: Eggs help combine ingredients and hold them together. This gives food its structure and prevents it from falling apart.

    Leavening: Eggs trap pockets of air in foods, causing them to expand during heating. This helps foods puff up or rise, giving baked goods like soufflés, angel food cake and meringues their volume and light, airy texture.

    Moisture: The liquid from eggs is absorbed into the other ingredients in a recipe, which helps add moisture to the finished product.

    Flavor and appearance: Eggs help carry the flavors of other ingredients and brown when exposed to heat. They help improve the taste of baked goods and contribute to their golden-brown appearance.

Without eggs, most baked goods might be dry, flat or flavorless.

Unfortunately, some people cannot eat eggs, or simply choose not to. Or reside on a planet not conducive to chickens. Luckily, plenty of foods can replace eggs in baking, though not all of them act the same way.

Common egg alternatives:

Applesauce

Mashed Banana

Ground Flaxseeds or Chia Seeds

Silken Tofu

Vinegar and Baking Soda

Yogurt or Buttermilk

Arrowroot Powder

Aquafaba

Nut Butter

Carbonated Water

Agar-Agar

Gelatin

Soy Lecithin

Some egg alternatives are better for heavy, dense products, while others are great for light and fluffy baked goods. You will need to experiment with various egg alternatives to get the texture and flavor you desire in your recipes.

The latest fad in egg substitutes: Blood.

Eggs and blood have similar protein compositions, particularly with the albumin that gives both their coagulant properties. Based on these similarities, a substitution ratio of 65g of blood for one egg (approx. 58g), or 43g of blood for one egg white (approx. 33g) can be used in the kitchen. Using this method, we developed recipes for sourdough-blood pancakes, blood ice cream, blood meringues, and ‘chocolate’ blood sponge cake.

Don’t be so squeamish, a rare cooked stake will be just full of blood as my blood meringue pie.

A benefit of blood as an egg substitute is its ability to prevent anaemia – the most common micronutrient deficiency worldwide – due to the high bioavailability of its haeme-iron. This iron, of course, is often the challenging factor for taste, which in many cultures have traditionally alleviated by pairing with it strong flavours such as herbs and spices. We investigated some of these traditional pairings as well as some newer ones including woodruff and roasted koji.

A slaughtered targ can yield between two and ten kilograms of blood, depending on age and size when slaughtered. Besides painting yourself with it to scare young children and tourists, there are lots of interesting traditional blood puddings, blood sausages, blood desserts and blood pancakes.

We siphon blood off my two targs at least every two days, else Spike gets all bloated and irritable and the excess blood production coagulates Fluffy’s milk making her even harder to milk. I get a total of about a liter of blood from the two of them every 4 days.

To my surprise, blood can be substituted for eggs, especially in pastry, given that egg white intolerance is one of the largest food allergies.

Most blood from slaughterhouses are separated into plasma and serum used in animal feed, pharmaceutics, cosmetics, and commercial products like cigarette filters. Dried blood is used as fish food or fertilizer. Red blood cells are used for mink feed. Meat glue, or transglutaminase, is used to make novel forms of meat, like imitation crab, or to bind cuts in hams so popular with offworlders. An enzyme extracted from blood, originally responsible for clotting by stabilizing the protein fibrin.

Blood is a homogenous mixture of blood cells and serum. The serum (55%) is mainly composed of water (80%) and proteins (17%) such as albumin, fibrinogen and globulin, as well as glucose, minerals and various hormones.

Serum albumin is the most abundant and important protein in the serum, at around 50% of total protein content. This places it at a similar level to ovalbumin in eggs, around 60% of total protein content – which means in the kitchen, it provides an optimal replacement due to its foaming ability.

There are three types of blood cells suspended in the serum: white blood cells; platelets or thrombocytes; and red blood cells which contain most of the haemoglobin, a iron-bound protein that is responsible for the red colour. Colour changes depend on reactions of these iron ions, regulated by storage conditions, oxygen availability, and temperature, and are similar to the colour changes that happen with meat. Vacuum-packed, blood is dark, close to purple; left outside for a while or whipped into foam, it turns bright red; and heat treatment leading to protein denaturation gives it a dark-chocolate brown, nearly black appearance.

Blood Clotting

When the animal is slaughtered, the blood platelets and plasma come into contact with other animal tissue, causing blood clotting. Due to the enzyme thrombin, the fibrinogen in the serum is transformed into fibrin, an insoluble protein forming strands. In these strands, big red blood cells get predominantly trapped, giving the intense dark colour from the haemoglobin contained therein.

There are several anticoagulants that can be added to prevent this process. Generally calcium ion binding salts such as citrates and phosphates are used in slaughterhouses to prevent clotting. Traditionally, a metal spoon would be used, with constant stirring. If calcium ions are bound, no available calcium means no clotting.

Important: shake blood regularly before use, and remember to strain.

Blood shows a similar protein composition to egg, yet with slightly different types of proteins. The serum albumin, as the main constituent of blood protein with 55% is tolerated whereas ovalbumin in egg white leads to heavy allergic reactions. But perhaps the greatest argument for cooking more with blood is to alleviate iron deficiency, which causes anaemia ­– the most common micronutrient deficiency.The haeme-iron in blood is the best possible source for the human body, showing a 2- to 7-fold bioavailabilty in comparison to non-haeme iron.

The texture in blood pastries in comparison to egg-pastries is intriguingly similar. When whipping blood, more time and stepwise increase in speed is required, similar to methods for producing a very stable, fine-beaten egg white.

Coagulation due to heat treatment occurs between 63°C - 75°C. Heat denaturation of serum albumin requires a temperature of 75°C – at this temperature batters with blood will thicken. Egg coagulation, due to ovalbumin on the other hand, does not happen until 84.5°C. So less heat and hence less time is required when cooking with blood.

General substitution ratios:

1 egg (approx. 58 g/unit) = 65 g of blood

1 egg white (approx. 33 g/unit) = 43 g of blood

There are interesting leavening properties in baking sourdough bread when sourdough starter is fed with blood instead of water for its final feeding. Volume nearly doubled in less than 1 hour, turning the bread dough dark-chocolate brown and changing the flavour profile of the bread to a richer, mildly acidic, moist bread. This discovery is still preliminary, and more culinary research is needed on blood and sourdough.

Hiding the animal – masking aromatic agents

Eugenol and cinnamaldehyde are classic aromatic compounds that are found in traditional recipes in combination with blood. In tasting panels done with blood meringues (recipe below) cinnamon and clove expectedly scored low in bloody aftertaste, but new combinations involving roasted barley koji and woodruff also showed promise.

Another good combination appears to be blood and acid, as tried in the sourdough blood pancake recipe. One possible reason could be due to the similarity of stimuli for acidic and metallic receptors on the tongue, both being sensed through ion channels, but we have found no research on this subject.

RECIPES

Here are some recipes that can be and have been eaten with a clear conscience.

Note: These recipes are obviously not kosher, halaal, tamasic, rajasic, sattvic, or ahimsa. If you don’t know what any of those words are, then you are probably allowed to eat these dishes. Enjoy and good luck.

Blood ice cream (for 1 paco container – 12 servings)

This recipe is inspired by traditional Italian dessert variations called sanguinaccio. Given that cocoa doesn’t grow here in the north, we have run our trials with roasted barley koji, which is a brilliant alternative and ingredient in its own right – especially in combination with blood, giving body, bittersweet complexity and increasing the malty notes of the moulded, toasted grain taste.

300 ml pig blood (318 g)

60 g roasted Koji

300 g milk 3.5% fat (it may need around 200 ml extra, depending on the fineness and absorption capacities of the grain)

200 g cream (38% fat)

88 g trimoline (or 11% of ice cream mixture)

2.8 g guar gum (or 0.3% of rest of ice cream mixture including trimoline)

The day before:

Grind roasted koji to fine powder and cold-infuse it into 300 ml of milk. Leave at 4°C for 24h.

Production day:

Pass cold infusion through a super bag and measure yield. Add more whole milk to reach weight of 300 g.

Strain pig blood to remove coagulated protein clumps.

Add cream, blood and trimoline to mixture and start to heat over water bath while stirring constantly. Once temperature reaches 50°C, add guar gum and continue stirring until mixture thickens to chocolate brown custard. Heat until 75°C and hold at temperature for 15 seconds. Fill pacojet container and freeze.

Once frozen, spin in pacojet and serve.

Sourdough Blood Pancakes

The acidity of the sourdough starter is a great aid to soften the metallic aftertaste of the blood.

235 ml of rye sourdough starter

150 ml of pig blood

30 g of melted butter

50 g of granulated sugar

Strain pig blood to remove blood clots.

Add sugar to blood and whisk in Kmix/Kitchenaid. Increase speed gradually until mixture is stiff.

Mix sourdough starter with melted butter, fold in 1/3 of blood foam, and add the rest once it becomes a homogenous batter. Bake in pan in abundant butter until dark chocolate colour.

Caution: Easy to burn due to similar colour range of batter and burned pancake.

Blood Meringue

Blood as egg substitute in meringue seems difficult texture-wise at first, but once the whipped blood and sugar form this magnificent foam, all doubts are cleared. This one was inspired by the pig's blood macaron.

Trials have been done with both the French and Italian meringue methods (uncooked and cooked).

70 g pig blood

30 g of granulated sugar

30 g of icing sugar

Flavour variations used:

2 pinches of Long pepper and salt, ground

Or 2 pinches of cinnamon, ground

Or 3 pinches of woodruff, dried and ground

Pour blood and granulated sugar and start mixing at low speed. Gradually increase speed up to level 5-6 once sugar is dissolved. Add icing sugar to the whipping blood, and make sure nothing sticks to the wall. Season blood mixture when it is glossy, bright red, and very stiff.

Fill in piping bag, place meringue on baking mats and dry at 93°C at very low ventilation level (level 2 on Combi Rationale oven) until dry and dark chocolate brown.

Blood Sponge Cake – Basic recipe without egg

230 g pig blood

100 g granulated sugar

25 g wheat flour

25 g corn starch

25 g cocoa or roasted koji, ground

Sieve flour, starch and koji twice to obtain a homogenous mixture. Mix blood very slowly gradually adding sugar. Once dissolved increase speed to level 6-7 and whip until stiff. Pour in flour-mixture and lower speed to minimum, incorporating flour into blood mixture without volume loss.

Fill in spring form and bake at 180°C for 25 minutes. Test the cake by touching the surface – when it makes a crackling sound the cake is ready.

If you make two, you can use them as the base for a classic black forest cake. Or in this case, a not-so-classic blood forest cake.

As with all the other recipes, taste testing was of utmost importance. I made two half-cakes: one with blood, the other a chocolate control. Both were delicious.

Best Practices when handling blood

1. Best source is your butcher of confidence. Ask him where the blood is from, when the pig was killed and how the blood was treated (with anticoagulants)

2. Smell it! It should have a sweet, rich, metallic odour without strong animal flavours. Strong aromatic changes can occur in un-castrated pigs due to their production of skatole and androstenone.

3. Respect cold chain throughout the handling (2 – 4 degrees) and use within a week when refrigerated.

4. Shake and strain before use.

5. Freeze for longer storage. The colour becomes darker. Thaw blood on the same day as processing.