Skip to main content
Main

Bologna Sausages

A cured sausage made from veal, salted beef, salt pork, bacon, and herbs, boiled and dried.

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 ↓

Bologna Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the veal, salted beef, and salt pork very fine.

  2. Mince the bacon, but not too fine.

  3. Mix all the meats together and season with sage, mixed herbs, ground pepper, and mixed spice.

Stuff and cook

  1. Fill the large sausage casing with the mixture.

  2. Boil the sausage quickly for nearly an hour.

  3. Prick the sausage, then lay it on straw until cold.

Dry

  1. Hang the sausage up 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. 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. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides lean body and a mild flavour that bulks out the meat mixture.
Salted beef
Adds savoury, cured meat flavour and firm texture to the filling.
Salt pork
Contributes fat, which keeps the sausage moist and tender as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty richness and extra fat for juiciness.

The step that matters

Boil the sausage quickly for nearly an hour. Holding the sausage at a rapid boil for the full time cooks the meat through and sets the filling inside the casing. Too gentle or too short a cook leaves the centre under-set and less safe to keep.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes