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Bologna Sausages

A sausage made from beef suet, pork, bacon, beef, veal, sage, sweet herbs, pepper, and sea salt, stuffed in a cleaned gut.

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 Sausages

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Chop the sage leaves and sweet herbs finely.

  3. Season the meat mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stuff and cook

  1. Fill the cleaned gut with the mixture.

  2. Prick the sausage to prevent bursting.

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

  4. Lay the sausage 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 filling moist and juicy during cooking.
Pork
Provides the main meat body and texture of the filling.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the mixture.
Beef
Contributes meaty flavor and firm texture to the filling.
Veal
Adds a mild, delicate meat flavor and tender texture.

The step that matters

Prick the sausage to prevent bursting. As the filling heats, steam and expanding fat build pressure inside the casing. Pricking lets that pressure escape so the gut does not split during boiling.

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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