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Bologna Sausages

Sausages made from beef, pork, bacon, suet, seasoned with pepper, salt, thyme, mace, and smoked.

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 Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Put the meat and suet into a pot of hot water and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Mince each type of meat separately.

  3. Season the minced meat with pepper, chopped thyme, and ground mace.

Stuff and cure

  1. Stuff the mixture into ox intestines and tie them in lengths.

  2. Soak the sausages in a beef brine for 10 days.

Smoke and store

  1. Smoke the sausages like ham or tongue.

  2. Rub ground ginger or pepper over the outside after smoking.

  3. Store the sausages in a cool, dry place.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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 + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Thyme + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 lean meat, giving the sausage its body and bite.
Lean pork
Adds meat and flavour alongside the beef, shaping the sausage's texture.
Fat bacon
Adds fat, which keeps the sausage moist and juicy as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds hard fat that enriches the mixture and helps keep it moist.

The step that matters

Soak the sausages in a beef brine for 10 days. Salt in the brine draws out moisture and seasons the meat through, while curing helps preserve it. Too short a soak can leave the centre under-seasoned and less well preserved.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, thyme. 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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