A BLACK pudding produced by a small family-run meat business near Stourport, which was the customers’ favourite at a launch event in a nearby farm shop, has now brought home the bacon at the “world black pudding championships” in France.

After getting the nod from customers during the launch of Little Black Pig’s collaboration with Bells Farm Shop, Chadwick Bank, Stourport, the owner Kate Daniels decided to go the whole hog and enter the pudding into the Foire au Boudin Festival in south Normandy – known as the “world championships”. It was awards a silver medal.

In fact the idea to enter the Hodges recipe in the French competition came from 2011 Great British Bake Off finalist and Little Black Pig customer Mary-Anne Boermans, who lives in Kidderminster, and has been researching historic British food recipes.

She provided the original Hodges black pudding recipe, one of 34,000 recipes she has collected from British manuscripts thanks to the Wellcome Library. The recipe is attributed to Martha Hodges and dates from between 1675 and 1725.

Mary-Anne is particularly interested in the fact that pre-Victorian times, many recipes contained a considerable number of herbs and spices. The Hodges recipe has no less than 13 herbs and spices.

Kate Daniels, who owns Little Black Pig, said: “Mary-Anne is one of our customers she was always getting in touch with us to see if we had unusual ingredients like mutton suet. Her interest is in England’s historical connection with cooking using spices.

“She and I both like black pudding and she had found eight historical recipes for black pudding and we chose to make four of them for a tasting session at the Bells Farm Shop launch.”

When the black pudding tasting went down so well, Mary-Anne suggested entering the Hodges into the Foire au Boudin - the unofficial "world black pudding championships" . “It was proposed as a bit of a laugh but I said ‘Let’s do it’,” Kate said.

She said black pudding is part of the food culture in south Normandy and local people are connoisseurs of these products.

“I was confident the Hodges black pudding was lovely but I did not think we would come out with a medal. We were gobsmacked when we looked up the results and we got a silver medal,” said Kate. The festival is organised by the “Knights of the Black Pudding” and as a silver medal winner, Kate was invited to Normandy to become a Knight of the Black Pudding.

Mary-Anne said she has spent six or seven years researching historical recipes. “It is my mission to prove we have a varied and spicy and quite sophisticated food heritage.

“I am a bit of a novice when it comes to black pudding but I thought entering it in the competition was worth a punt and the flavour was so different to the middle-of-the-range black pudding available on supermarket shelves. It was amazing to get a silver medal.”

• Little Black Pig rears British Saddleback pigs, Ryeland Sheep and has laying hens at its Willow Farm site off the A449 between Ombersley and Hartlebury. It now has its butchery counter at Bells Farm Shop.