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Bologna Sausages

A sausage made from a mixture of beef suet, pork, bacon, beef, veal, sage, pepper, and 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 ↓

Bologna Sausages

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the beef suet, pork, bacon, beef, and veal together.

  2. Chop the sage leaves and mix with the meat.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill the cleaned sausage casings with the mixture.

  2. Prick the sausages to prevent bursting.

  3. Boil in a saucepan of water for 1 hour.

  4. Lay the sausages to dry on clean straw.

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. Pork + vealtop 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

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender as it cooks.
Pork
Provides the main meat body and juiciness in the filling.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the mixture.
Beef
Gives the filling its meaty structure and flavor.
Veal
Adds a mild, tender meat base to the filling.

The step that matters

Prick the sausages before boiling. Pricking lets steam and expanding air escape during cooking, which helps prevent the casings from bursting.

Swap the sage

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