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Bologna Sausages

A sausage made from lean beef, lean pork, bacon, suet, seasoned with pepper, salt, thyme, mace, and smoked after brining.

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 Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Put the meat and suet into a pot of hot water and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Mince each type of meat separately.

  3. Season the minced meat with pepper, chopped thyme, and ground mace.

Stuff and cure

  1. Fill ox intestines with the mixture and tie them in lengths.

  2. Soak the sausages in a beef brine for 10 days.

Smoke and store

  1. Smoke the sausages like ham or tongue.

  2. Rub ground ginger or pepper over the outside after smoking.

  3. Store in a cool, dry place.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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 + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Thyme + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main lean protein that sets firm as the sausage cooks, giving it body and bite.
Lean pork
Adds savory flavor and moisture to the lean mixture alongside the beef.
Fat bacon
Supplies fat that bastes the lean meat from within, keeping the sausage juicy and richly flavored.
Beef suet
Hard fat that stays solid at room temperature, adding moisture and tenderness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Soaking the sausages in beef brine for 10 days. Brine salt draws into the meat slowly over time, seasoning and curing it evenly. Too short a soak leaves the centre under-seasoned, while the long soak needs the sausages fully submerged and kept cold so they cure safely.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, thyme. 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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