Skip to main content
Main

Sausage, Bologna

A cured sausage made from lean beef, pork, suet, spices, and onion, then brined, smoked, and stored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sausage, Bologna

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the meat and suet separately until very fine.

  2. Mix all the chopped meat and suet together.

  3. Add the white pepper, ground mace, salt, cayenne, and chopped onion; mix thoroughly.

  4. Fill the mixture into casings or strong linen bags and tie into lengths.

Cure in brine

  1. Make a brine that will float an egg; submerge the sausage in it for two weeks, turning and skimming daily.

  2. After one week, discard the old brine and replace it with fresh brine for the second week.

Smoke and store

  1. Smoke the sausages for one week.

  2. After smoking, rub the outside with olive oil and store in a cool, dark, dry place.

  3. For longer preservation, sprinkle the outside with pepper.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat structure and savory flavor of the sausage.
Lean fresh pork
Adds meat structure and a milder, richer flavor to the filling.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and gives it a smooth texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor, helping keep the filling moist.
Salt
Seasons the filling and helps draw out moisture and preserve the meat.

The step that matters

Chopping the meat and suet very fine. Fine chopping spreads fat and lean meat evenly through the filling, so the sausage slices smoothly and the texture stays consistent instead of greasy or crumbly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, mace, onion. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes