Most kids know that there is this pink seasoned sausage which, between two slices of bread, becomes an integral part of a bologna sandwich ... or a baloney sandwich. But which sandwich is it?
The word "bologna" comes from the city in north central Italy where some similar sausages are made, only they are called mortadella by the people who make and eat them there. This (city and sandwich) is pronounced buh-LOH-nuh or buh-LOH-nyuh.
Who knows where the word baloney comes from? It is pronounced buh-LOH-nee and is used perhaps more by children than adults ... perhaps because children consume more of this particular sandwich than do adults.
When colloquialized, one suspects that the latter pronunciation is used almost exclusively, as in "That's a bunch of baloney" used to mean nonsense, foolishness, malarkey.
Baloney? Whence?
Doctor Bill sent me this website and it is (moderately) helpful. No baloney.
http://www.birch.net/~lindabrown/000079.htm
I've never heard anyone pronounce the word for the sandwich meat like the city. If I ever heard anyone asking for, or speaking of, a bo-lone-ya sandwich, I would have to think he/she was disgustingly twee, or was just discovering it.
Apropos of this, I am reminded of the following joke by, I think, Rodney Dangerfield:
What do you get if you cross a crocodile with an abalone? A crockabalone.
This is on a par with, What do you get if you cross a bumblebee with a doorbell? A humdinger.
I've always called it mortadella. Baloney is something the non-Italians put in their wonderbread sandwiches along with the library paste and tasteless yellow stuff.
Well you learn something every day. Until now I didn't realise that baloney and mortadella were one and the same. Here in Australia it is always referred to as mortadella. I thought baloney was something of an equivilent to our devon.
"mortadella = Bologna sausage. (American)"
~Rodney Dale,
The Wordsworth Dictionary of Culinary and Menu Terms Ware, Herts.: Worsdworth Editions, 2000, p. 288.
About "devon" see
http://www.anu.edu.au/ANDC/Ozwords/November_98/2._regionalisms.htm
In reply to:
If I ever heard anyone asking for, or speaking of, a bo-lone-ya sandwich, I would have to think he/she was disgustingly twee, or was just discovering it.
Whereas I have to consciously remind myself that you USn's do a Throatwarbler Mangrove on the name of that ancient seat of learning. One of my sammarinese friends dismisses mortadella as inferior prosciutto, for the budget-conscious eater.
My kids are on a first-name basis with it so they call it oscar.
Shellb, Max et al.: To say that mortadella and bologna are the same thing is like saying that hamburger is the same as filet mignon.
Firstly, bologna is made entirely of very finely ground meat with a uniform color and texture. Secondly, bologna is made of pork and beef in some proportion or other. In my family, bologna sandwiches were eaten when you ran out of anything better, or when you couldn't afford anything better.
Italian mortadella, and its USn imitations, is usually somewhat larger and also comes in a considerably larger piece the slices of which are larger than a large slice of bread. It is somewhat more coarsely ground than bologna and it has rather large white globs in it (lard). It may also have pistachios in it. A sandwich of pistachio mortadella is no cheap plebean bologna sandwich. The taste of bologna and American mortadella is, however, similar, the reason being that they are both made of pork, veal, and/or beef.
Italian mortadella, however, has a better flavor and the reason is (did you know this, Max) -- it's made with horsemeat!
Italian (horsemeat) mortadella can not be made in the U.S. or imported into the U.S.; only the imitation is available here, since it is illegal everywhere to sell horsemeat for human consumption. Pity. The USDA and other USn state authorities could learn a lot from a boucherie chevaline or macelleria cavallina. Horsemeat is quite tasty.
mortadella=horsemeat
This page,
http://www.milioni.com/salumi/dati/8.htm, seems to suggest that this is not always the case, if I understood this paragraph correctly:
In reply to:
Sull'etichetta (per i prodotti confezionati sottovuoto) o sul bollo attaccato a una delle estremità della mortadella si può verificare immediatamente la provenienza delle carni utilizzate per produrla: se c'è una "S" vuoi dire che è di puro suino, se c'è una "B" di suino e bovino, se c'è una "O" che è prodotta anche con carni ovine infine, se c'è una "C", significa che tra gli ingredienti figura anche la carne di cavallo.
Unless I am much mistaken, the above says that there are different letters used to indicate the type(s) of meat used in the production of any given mortadella. So, if the mortadella one bought did not have the letter "C" (for "cavallo", presumably) on it, then no horsemeat was used in its production.
mortadella sf. [dal lat. myrtatum, condito con mirto] salsicciotto di carne di maiale, drogata con finochio o con altre sostanze. [From Palazzi Novissimo dizionario della lingua Italiana, 1979]
mortadella feminine noun. [< Latin myrtatum 'seasoned with myrtle(berries)'] a large sausage made of pork, spiced with fennel or other substances.
Thanks sjmaxq for the link. It seems that mortadella, like most sausages and laws, can be made with almost anything.
I seem to remember that Roman salami was made with donkey or horse meat. Regional cuisine introduces all kinds of variables. When I lived in Bonnm I discovered tha "authentic" (i.e., now hard to get) Sauerbraten is made with horse meat. There was at least one butcher in that town who sold horse meat, and one restaurant that served authentic Rhenish Sauerbraten.
I'm going to get my hands slapped for this, but:
Thick fried balogna, summer beefsteak tomatoes (room temperature), mayonnaise and any kind of bread is pretty darned tasty, if not healthful and filet mignon-like.
Well that's certainly gonna trigger a response or three.
Yup, you slap the mayo on like old paint.
Oh no, Wordwind, the baloney has to be thinly slice then pan-fried in butter. Then the rim becomes crunchy and salty like bacon. Mmmmmmmmmmm. With mashed potatoes on the side - double-mmmmmmmmm.
Not something you want to have every day (unless you want your arteries clogged up) but a tasty meal nonetheless.
and another reason I liked him - he shot TV screens