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Bologna-style Sausage

A smoked sausage made from lean beef, pork or bacon, seasoned with salt, pepper, and coriander, then canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Bologna-style Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the lean beef and fat pork or bacon finely.

  2. Season the meat with 2½ ounces of coarse sea salt, 1⅔ ounces of ground black pepper, and a little ground coriander.

Stuff and smoke

  1. Stuff the mixture into beef casings.

  2. Smoke the sausages for 10 to 12 hours.

Cook and can

  1. Cook the sausages in boiling water until they float.

  2. Cut the sausages into can lengths and pack them into cans.

  3. Add the hot cooking liquid to the cans, leaving a half-inch space at the top.

  4. Cap the cans and process them at 250°F (120°C) for 45 minutes or at 15 pounds of steam pressure.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + coriandertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Forms the main body of the sausage and gives it its meaty structure.
Fat pork or bacon
Adds fat for moisture and a juicy, tender texture in the sausage.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out and bind its proteins for a firmer texture.
Ground black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour that seasons the whole sausage.

The step that matters

Process the sealed cans at full heat and time. Sealed low-acid meat must reach a high internal temperature for long enough to destroy harmful microbes such as Clostridium botulinum spores. Under-processing is the main safety risk, so the stated temperature and time, or pressure, must be fully achieved.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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