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To Make Bologna Sausages

A sausage made from bacon, beef, veal, pork, beef suet, sage, sweet herbs, pepper, and sea salt.

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 ↓

To Make Bologna Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the bacon, beef, veal, pork, and beef suet into small pieces, then chop the pieces finely.

  2. Chop the sage leaves and sweet herbs finely.

  3. Mix the meats with the chopped herbs, and season generously with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Cook and dry

  1. Stuff the mixture into a large sausage skin.

  2. Place the sausage in a saucepan of boiling water, pricking the skin to prevent bursting.

  3. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  4. Lay the sausage on clean straw 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. Beef + vealtop 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

Bacon
Adds fat, which keeps the sausage moist and carries flavour through the meat.
Beef suet
Adds hard fat that melts during cooking, keeping the filling juicy and tender.
Beef
Provides the main meaty body and firm texture of the sausage.
Pork
Adds fat and richness, contributing moisture and a softer bite to the filling.
Veal
Contributes mild flavour and a fine, delicate texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Pricking the skin before boiling. Pricking lets steam and air escape as the filling heats and expands, so the skin does not burst. Gentle boiling keeps the fat from breaking out and the casing intact.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, 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 beef, veal, 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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