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Bologna Sausage

A cured sausage made from lean beef, lean pork, and bacon or ham, seasoned with thyme, mace, salt, and pepper, then smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Remove all fat and skin from the beef and pork, then boil in a saucepan of water for about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the meat, chop it into small pieces, and set aside.

  3. Chop the bacon or ham finely and mix it with the beef and pork.

  4. Add the chopped thyme, ground mace, salt, and pepper to the meat mixture.

Fill and cure

  1. Clean and soak the ox intestines, then fill them with the meat mixture and secure the ends.

  2. Soak the sausages in beef pickle for 9 to 10 days.

Smoke and store

  1. After soaking, dry the sausages with a cloth, wrap them in muslin, and smoke for 12 to 14 days.

  2. Rub the sausages with pepper or ground ginger and store in a cool 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. Thyme + peppertop 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. Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 meaty body and bulk of the sausage filling.
Lean pork
Adds richness and body to the meat filling alongside the beef.
Bacon or ham fat
Adds fat that keeps the sausage filling moist and tender.
Beef pickle
Salts and cures the sausages during the long soak, helping preserve the meat.

The step that matters

Soaking in beef pickle. The pickle must fully penetrate the sausages over 9 to 10 days, since salt and curing agents draw out moisture and preserve the meat. Uneven soaking leaves parts of the sausage under-cured and prone to spoilage.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, ham, thyme, 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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