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Bologna Sausages

A sausage made from equal parts beef, veal, pork, suet, and bacon, seasoned with sage, herbs, pepper, and salt, then boiled.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Chop the sage leaves and sweet herbs very fine, just enough to add flavor.

  3. Mix the chopped meat with the herbs, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the mixture into large entrails.

  2. Boil the sausages gently for about one hour.

  3. Prick the entrails to prevent bursting and lay them on clean straw until cold.

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. Veal + porktop 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.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor to the meat mixture.
Pork
Supplies fat and flavor, helping the sausage stay juicy.
Veal
Contributes mild flavor and a fine, tender texture to the filling.
Beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and structure of the filling.

The step that matters

Prick the entrails before boiling. Pricking lets steam and expanding air escape during cooking, so the casing does not burst. Gentle boiling keeps the emulsified fat and meat from splitting and toughening, which would make the sausage dry and crumbly.

Swap the sage

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