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Bologna Sausage

A sausage made from pork, veal, ham or salt pork, seasoned with pepper, cayenne, cloves, sage, onion, nutmeg, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bologna Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the meat finely and mix thoroughly.

  2. Stuff the mixture into cleaned beef intestines that have been soaked in salt water.

  3. Tie the ends of the casings when filled and prick them in several places.

Cook and dry

  1. Boil the sausages for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the sausages in the sun.

  3. Rub them with melted butter and hang in a cool, dry place.

Serve

  1. Slice thinly and serve without further cooking.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh pork
Supplies fat and protein that give the sausage its body and juiciness.
Veal
Adds mild, tender meat that balances the richer pork and ham.
Ham or salt pork
Adds cured, savory flavor and additional fat for moisture.
Powdered sage
Contributes the dominant aromatic, herbal flavor typical of bologna.
Black pepper
Adds pungent, warm seasoning that deepens the overall savoriness.

The step that matters

Boil the sausages for 1 hour. The sausage is pricked and then boiled to cook the meat through safely while letting the casing stay intact. Pricking lets steam and trapped air escape so the casings do not burst, and a steady simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the emulsified meat tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, ham, pepper, clove, sage, nutmeg. 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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