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Bologna Sausage

A sausage made from lean beef, bacon, suet, pork, sage, sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.

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

  1. Chop the beef, bacon, suet, and pork very small.

  2. Add the sage leaves and sweet herbs, then season with salt and pepper.

Stuff and cook

  1. Press the mixture into a large, clean sausage skin.

  2. Place the sausage in a saucepan of boiling water and prick it to prevent bursting.

  3. Boil for one hour.

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 + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Lean beef or veal
Provides the main meaty structure and chew of the sausage.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and carries flavor.
Beef suet
Adds hard fat that stays solid, giving a juicy, tender bite.
Lean pork
Adds meat flavor and binds the filling together with the other meats.

The step that matters

Pricking the sausage before boiling. Pricking lets steam and expanding air escape during heating, so the skin does not split or burst and fat does not leak out into the water.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Rosemaryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, 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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