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
Mix the chopped beef, pork, veal, and bacon with the suet.
Season the mixture with sage, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt.
Cook and cool
Press the mixture into a large sausage casing, securing both ends tightly.
Prick the sausage in several places.
Place the sausage in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and boil slowly for 1 hour.
Drain the sausage and place it on straw to cool.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,388 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,930 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Beef
- Provides the main meaty structure and chew of the sausage.
- Pork
- Adds richness and juiciness to the meat mixture.
- Veal
- Contributes a delicate, tender texture to the filling.
- Bacon fat
- Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and carries flavor.
- Beef suet
- Adds hard fat that enriches texture and moisture during cooking.
The step that matters
Pricking the sausage before boiling. Pricking lets steam and trapped air escape during cooking, reducing the chance the casing bursts and the sausage splits.
Swap the sage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, veal, pepper):
- Sagethe original
- Marjoramfits about as well
- Thymefits about as well
- Parsleyfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, veal, 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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