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Bologna Sausage

A sausage made from lean beef or veal, bacon, suet, pork, sage, sweet herbs, salt, pepper, and wrapped in a large skin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the beef, bacon, suet, and pork very small.

  2. Mix in the sage leaves and sweet herbs.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste.

Stuff and cook

  1. Press the mixture into a large, clean sausage skin.

  2. Place the sausage in a saucepan of boiling water and prick it to prevent bursting.

  3. Boil for one hour.

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

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

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

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

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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 or veal
Provides the lean meat that forms the main body of the sausage.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and juicy as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds hard fat that gives a rich, tender texture to the filling.
Lean pork
Adds meat that helps bind the filling and gives it savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Prick the sausage before boiling. Steam trapped inside the skin expands as it heats and can burst the casing. Pricking lets the steam escape, keeping the sausage intact and its filling in place.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Rosemaryfits about as well

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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