What Kind Of Meat Is Actually In Bologna?

Bologna (or baloney, as it's commonly spelled and pronounced) has a long reputation as one of the most mysterious lunch meats out there. While it's clear that ham comes from pork, and roast beef speaks for itself, there's an air of secrecy around bologna that has shrouded the deli counter classic for years. Even if you've been eating fried bologna sandwiches your entire life, you might still draw a blank when asked exactly what kind of meat is in these iconic pink cold cuts. However, the ingredients that make up bologna aren't a mystery at all: It's typically made with a mix of pork, beef, chicken, and turkey trimmings. 

Just like hot dogs, bologna is made from a smooth emulsified paste of meat trimmings that gets stuffed into a casing and pre-cooked. In fact, the key difference between the two (which are both classified as cooked sausages by the USDA) simply comes down to the casing that's used. Of course, bologna is traditionally sliced before being packaged and sold, making it perfect for being layered onto white bread or piled high in a Southern-style bologna cake.

It may seem like bologna is something that was invented in the years following the Industrial Revolution –– and with good reason, seeing as the sliced meat became extremely popular during the Great Depression due to its low cost and long shelf life. However, the true origins of bologna can be traced all the way back to ancient Rome through its Italian ancestor: mortadella. Hailing from northern Italy's city of Bologna (pronounced boh-LOH-nya), mortadella is a style of emulsified and cured meat that was allegedly used to feed the Roman army over 2,000 years ago.

Still, there are a few differences between mortadella and bologna. Unlike modern bologna meat, which is processed to contain no visible pieces of fat, mortadella is characteristically speckled with white chunks of lard, as well as nuts and spices like pistachios and black peppercorns. While there isn't a precise record of how mortadella made its way over to the United States (and became known as bologna in the process), the transatlantic migration of this sliced meat is usually attributed to German and Italian immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. After German American entrepreneur Oscar Meyer began producing the meat at an industrial scale, bologna earned the spendthrift reputation that it retains to this day.