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Bologna Sausage

A sausage made from pork, cloves, black pepper, and salt, smoked and hung.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bologna Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the pork, cloves, black pepper, and salt well.

  2. Let the mixture stand for twelve hours.

  3. Stuff the mixture into muslin bags that are 10 inches long and 4 inches wide.

Cure and smoke

  1. Soak the bags in ham pickle for five days.

  2. Smoke the bags for eight days.

Hang

  1. Hang the sausages in a dark 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. 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

Pork
Forms the main body of the sausage, providing protein structure and meaty texture.
Powdered black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that flavours the meat through the long curing period.
Powdered cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Soak the bags in ham pickle for five days. The pickle must fully penetrate the stuffed meat to cure it and season it evenly. Too short a soak leaves uneven curing, while the salt and cure work slowly through the mass, so the full five days matter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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