By Debbie Salomon
Gannett News Service

Wretched recipes spew from the cauldron on Halloween: ants-on-a-log, graveyard pudding, cotton candy spider webs and bleary eyeballs made from hard-cooked eggs. Gather round, ye thirsty Draculas, ye King Kongs grunting for a hair of the dog.

Halloween celebrants clamor for egregious edibles that go bump in the night - or at least sound like they do:

Blood pudding: Suck up to this European farm dish made from several quarts of pork blood, raisins, sugar, chestnuts, rice, oranges, figs, salt and pepper. Mix and bake for an hour, while having root canal on your fangs.

Brains: Calves' brains are best - and very, very fresh, please. Parboil all acidulated water, blanch in cold water, scramble with eggs. You're looking smarter already.

Sweetbreads: The thymus or pancreas of a young animal. French chefs smother this delicacy in a rice sauce.

Tripe: The lining of a cow's stomach, which, when simmered, develops a gelatinous texture. Popular in French and Mexican dishes.

Snails: Delicious in garlic butter, until you remember all the cute children's tales.

Marrow: The soft, fatty tissue found in the hollow center of a bone. Europeans use a long, narrow marrow spoon to scoop the cooked marrow from the bone for spreading on bread.

Unhatched eggs: Yolks without whites or shells found inside the chicken. Sometimes available at kosher butchers.

Head cheese: A sausage made of finely chopped pork from the head, cooked down to a jelly.

Red-eye gravy: Pan juices from frying ham mixed with water and coffee.

Mountain oysters: Immature testicles from a young animal. Sauteed, deep-fried or braised, they're popular in Europe and the Middle East.

Slumguillion: Wild West slang for leftovers stirred together over the campfire.

Haggis: The Scottish dish made from sheep's stomach stuffed with oatmeal, liver, spices, unmentionables.

One-hundred-year-old eggs: Duck eggs soaked in tea leaves, lime, soda and rock salt for a few days to a week and eaten with ginger. The Chinese tend to exaggerate.

Chitterlings, aka chittlins: Curly-cue pork small intestines that must be cleaned, soaked, cleaned again (these are intestines, remember) and cooked in a variety of ways.

Croc pot: Aussies think crocodile cooked every which way is yummy good stuff. Beware stray incisors in your stew.

Fish eyes: What World War I doughboys called tapioca.

Mugwort: Sounds like Harry Potter's sidekick. Actually, an herb tasting like absinthe, an addictive liqueur distilled from wormwood that tastes like anise.

Whortleberry: Blueberries and their cousins.