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For those with a vampire fetish (or merely a chocolate one), Logan Circle’s new eatery The Pig is offering a chocolate ice cream sundae made with real pig’s blood. The $6 dessert is appropriately called the “Sundae Bloody Sundae.”
Chef Garret Fleming explains that the blood is a substitute for egg yolks, which are used in many ice cream recipes to turn cream into a smooth custard.
“It’s based on an ancient Italian recipe for blood pudding,” Fleming says. “I’m a lover of food history. When I came upon that, I knew I was going to do it.”
The local butchers that Fleming sources from can’t legally sell him pig’s blood. But it is available in yogurt-like containers at some Asian markets. When his sous chef picked it up, he got some suspicious looks for saying, “I’d like ten gallons of your pig’s blood.”
Fleming tells Y&H that there’s just as much blood in the recipe as there is chocolate and that it gives the ice cream a subtle “minerality” like really good dark chocolate.
I can’t say I’ve ever had straight-up pig’s blood, but whatever it tastes like is pretty well masked behind the heavy chocolate and touch of Grand Marnier. The consistency is more like a dense mousse than ice cream. It’s so rich and so sweet that I can only stomach a few bites before surrendering my spoon. My sweet-toothed dining companion manages a few more, but together we can only finish half of it.
The ice cream is served in a tall glass with ginger whipped cream, a brandied cherry, and a thick chunk of spicy/salty/sweet bacon peanut brittle, which sticks to your teeth (though I’m willing to blame it’s lack of crunchiness on the 70 percent humidity on the night we tried it).
Overall, the novelty is more exciting than the actual dessert. But then again, it’s pretty fun to tell your friends you ate pig’s blood ice cream.
Photo by Jessica Sidman