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Bologna Sausage

A sausage made from equal parts beef and pork seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, cloves, garlic, and bacon.

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 Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pound equal quantities of beef and pork to a paste.

  2. Season the mixture highly with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, cloves, and a little garlic.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the mixture into sausage skins, adding strips of fat bacon.

  2. Boil for one hour or smoke for two to three months before use.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meaty structure and firm bite once pounded and cooked.
Pork
Adds fat and juiciness, keeping the sausage tender when cooked.
Fat bacon
Adds fat in strips that melt during cooking, adding moisture and savory flavor.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that deepens the seasoned flavor of the sausage.

The step that matters

Choosing between boiling and smoking. Boiling cooks the meat through in about an hour, while smoking is a long curing process lasting months. The two routes give very different results, so the cook should follow only one.

Swap the mace

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

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

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