the.com/bolognese
The sauce so guarded its real recipe sits notarized in a Bologna vault.
means A rich Italian meat sauce of slowly simmered beef (often with pork), soffritto, tomato, and milk or wine, typically served with pasta — and abroad, the dish of spaghetti served with it.
from From the Italian ragù alla bolognese, meaning 'in the style of Bologna,' the prosperous northern city whose name traces back through Latin Bononia, a settlement whose origins lie with the Etruscans and the Celtic Boii tribe. The '-ese' suffix is the same one that turns Milan into 'Milanese' and Genoa into 'Genovese' — a tidy Italian way of saying 'from that place.' Bologna's own nickname, la grassa ('the fat one'), nods to a culinary reputation that long predated the sauce's global fame.
- legal recipe
- Official version registered with Bologna's Chamber of Commerce, 1982
- no spaghetti
- Bolognese clings to tagliatelle; spaghetti is foreign betrayal
- milk inside
- Real ragù adds milk to tame the tomato
- slow burn
- Authentic versions simmer for hours, not minutes
- barely tomato
- It's a meat sauce that happens to be tinted red
spaghetti bolognese — british-american pasta dish popularized in the 1950s, though not authentic to bologna