Black Feasts - Idlewild Designs

Dining off black-bordered plates, the company had enjoyed turtle soup, Russian rye bread, ripe olives from Turkey, caviare, mullet botargo, black puddings from Frankfurt, game served in sauces the color of liquorice and boot-polish, truffle jellies, chocolate creams, plum-puddings, nectarines, pears in grape-juice syrup, mulberries and black heart cherries. From dark-tinted glasses they had drunk the wines of Limagne and Roussillon, of Tenedos, Valdepeñas and Oporto. And after coffee and walnut cordial, they had rounded off the evening with kvass, porter and stout.

— a black feast held to mourn the loss of the Duc de
Esseintes's virility in A Rebours, by Huysman

Meat and Eggs

Black tamales - Tamales blackened with prunes, raisins, and mole sauce.

Blood sausage/black pudding

Caviar

Greenshell mussels - The shells are dark enough to pass for black.

Mullet botargo - "Bottarga di muggine," grey mullet roe

Swans' flesh

Tea eggs

Cheese

Sepia - A Japanese Camembert colored with squid or cuttlefish ink.

Waimata Taepo - A Brie from New Zealand that gets its black color from being rolled in ash.

Bread, Rice, Potatoes, and Pasta

Forbidden rice

Rye bread

Shetland black potatoes

Squid ink pasta

Wild rice

Soup

Black bean soup

Black sesame seed porridge

Sauces

The world contains too many black sauces to list. This is, and always will be, merely a partial listing.

Kentucky black sauce - Made with vinegar, dark molasses, salt, and pepper, and traditionally served with mutton.

Maggi sauce - A bottled seasoning/sauce made by a Swiss company, but most popular in Asia.

Malaysian spicy black sauce - Made with sweet soy sauce, garlic, chili padi, limes, onion, and red chili.

Malaysian sweet black sauce - Soy sauce, plum sauce, and sesame oil.

Mole - Spices and chocolate.

Squid ink sauce

Seasonings and Garnishes

Black olives
Tapenade

Black pepper

Black sesame seeds

Liquorice

Mustard seeds

Poppy seeds

Vegetables

Aubergines/eggplant

Black beans
Black bean dip

Black-eyed peas

Huitlacoche - Ustilago maydis, or corn smut. Used to make black sauces.

Truffles

Fruits and Nuts

Black cherries

Black grapes

Black plums

Black walnuts

Blackberries

Dark jellies

Mulberries

Nectarines

Prunes

Zapote negro - Black sapote, a Central American cousin of the persimmon.

Drinks

Black coffee

Black Velvet - A cocktail made with Guinness and champagne.

The black wine of Cahors Black wines - Bandol, Cahors, Limagne, Madiran, Oporto, Roussillon, Syrah-Grenache, Tenedos, Valdepeñas

Godiva liqueur

Kvass

Porter

Stout

Walnut cordial

Dessert

Black Forest cake

Dark chocolate

Liquorice

Plum pudding

Sugared black pansies and black violets
On crystallizing flowers

Black Colorings

Black food coloring - Tends to make food bitter; use advisedly. You can buy it or make it yourself.

Portobello mushrooms - Cooking just the gills in a sauce will turn the sauce black.

Squid ink

The collation on the little ebony table beyond the coffin consisted entirely of black foods. By sight and then by nibbling and sipping the Mouser discovered their nature: thin slices of a very dark rye bread crusted with poppy seeds and dripped with black butter; slivers of charcoal-seared steak; similarly broiled tiny thin slices of calf's liver sprinkled with dark spices and liberally pricked with capers; the darkest grape jellies; truffles cut paper thin and mushrooms fried black; pickled chestnuts; and of course, ripe olives and black fish eggs—caviar. The black drink, which foamed when he poured it, turned out to be stout laced with the bubbly wine of Ilthmar.

— Fritz Leiber, "Bazaar of the Bizarre"

The photograph comes from "Uncorked,"
in the February 2004 issue of House & Garden.