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Bologna Sausages

A sausage made from beef suet, bacon, beef, pork, veal, and herbs, boiled and hung to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Bologna Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the beef suet, bacon, beef, pork, and veal finely.

  2. Add the shredded sage, marjoram, and pennyroyal.

  3. Season the mixture highly with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill the mixture into large sausage casings.

  2. Prick the sausages with a needle.

  3. Boil the sausages for one hour.

  4. Hang the sausages to dry.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky flavour that enriches the meat mixture.
Pork
Provides fat and body that bind the meat into a cohesive sausage.
Veal
Contributes mild flavour and a fine, tender texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Prick the sausages with a needle. Pricking the casings lets steam and trapped air escape during boiling, which helps prevent the casings from bursting.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Marjoramthe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Rosemaryfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, veal, sage, 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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