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Bologna Sausage

A sausage made from lean beef or veal, fat bacon, beef suet, lean pork, sage leaves, sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 meat

  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

Lean beef or veal
Provides the main meaty body and firm bite of the sausage.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and carries flavour.
Beef suet
Adds hard fat that stays solid in the mix, giving a juicy texture after cooking.
Lean pork
Adds meaty flavour and body alongside the beef or veal.

The step that matters

Prick the sausage before boiling. Pricking lets steam and trapped air escape as the sausage heats, which helps prevent the casing from bursting.

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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