When Joe and I were first married, I delighted in fixing his
favorite meals. I’d mention things that
I knew how to cook, and he’d say “Yes, make that” so I would. He
and I both had grown up with mothers and grandmothers who were good
cooks … and frugal cooks. He used to
talk about having to take bologna sandwiches every day for his school
lunch. I walked two blocks home for
lunch, so we didn’t have that in common, but we did have bologna in common. We also had bologna salad in common. The first time I made it, he was
thrilled. The second time I made it, he
pulled a prank on his least favorite aunt.
His Aunt Billie and her husband came to visit on a
Sunday. They just dropped by to see
where we lived. In reality, they were
hoping for a free lunch. Billie was an
arrogant woman, and she didn’t hesitate to let her presumed superiority be
known. She went all through the house,
even opened the bedroom closet, and Joe was not happy. Realizing they weren’t going to leave until
we fed them, he suggested that I make them a sandwich for lunch. I was happy to plate bologna salad sandwiches
with chips and a dill pickle spear for each of them. Billie proclaimed that her sandwich was the
best ham salad she had ever had. Joe
smiled ear to ear as he told her, “That’s because it’s bologna salad.”
Growing up, my mother had certain menu items that she
repeated every week. During high school
football season, Friday nights included supper of hamburgers, chips and
soda. That was a treat because of the
soda and chips, but I’m not sure it was the best meal for my football playing
brothers.
Lunch meat sandwiches weren’t on the menu much because Daddy
wanted cooked food. However, in the heat
of the summer months especially when Mother was in the midst of canning,
bologna salad was a favorite Saturday lunch menu item. Think of those primary color Pyrex mixing
bowls. The biggest yellow one was filled
with potato salad. The green one was
filled with bologna salad for sandwiches.
The red one was filled with creamy slaw and the blue one remained empty
to hold any leftovers! In those days, we
didn’t have food processors, so we chopped everything for the bologna salad with an old fashioned food
grinder. At our house, the only place we
could fasten the grinder was on a basement step! Our kitchen counters and kitchen table did
not have an edge where it would work. It
was a project!
Mother came from a big German family, and I suspect her
recipe for bologna salad came from one of her many relatives. Wurst Salat is identified as a recipe that
came to America with German immigrants.
Families in many regions, heavily populated with families of German
descent, enjoy it still today. It is
kind of like potato salad in that every family has its own recipe! The variations are many.
Bologna originated in Italy, specifically in its namesake city, Bologna. We know it as Mortadella. It is made from beef and pork and is studded with little chunks of fat. Italian immigrants brought it to America, shared it with German sausage makers and bologna was Americanized to be what we love today. In Germany, Wurst Salat is made differently in regions. It is typically julienned. Strips of Swiss cheese, pickles, onion and sometimes pimento are added. Dressings range from a vinegar and oil base to a mayonnaise base. A quick internet search will lead you to recipes and pictures. It is served as a salad with rustic bread, boiled eggs and radishes.
We see this style of salad in German communities in the
United States. We find it made with
German bologna which has a nice garlic flavor
Amish and Mennonite communities favor Lebanese bologna, which originated
in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. This
beef bologna is heavily flavored with spices like black pepper, white pepper, mace
and nutmeg. It is smoked and I think it
is more like a summer sausage than typical bologna.
I’m happy to share my recipe for bologna salad today. We love it on soft white bread and on crackers. My husband could eat a whole sleeve of saltines with bologna salad. I enjoy it for breakfast/brunch on white toast. Find your favorite way to eat it and adjust the recipe to your own tastes. Enjoy!
Use a food processor to prepare these ingredients. Begin by chopping the onion and celery into chunks. Add the bologna and the egg. Continue chopping until it reaches the consistency you desire. Complete the mixing in a bowl. Add the relish, juice, mayonnaise, mustard, salt, pepper and a sprinkling of celery seed. You should adjust the liquid ingredients if the salad is too dry. You can certainly eat this immediately. It is better if you refrigerate it for a couple hours. This will last in the fridge for three days but doesn’t hold up well in the freezer. I have, however, made sandwiches on white bread and frozen them. They are great to take in a packed lunch. Just remove from the freezer in the morning and by lunchtime, they are ready to eat. If the mayonnaise liquifies because of the freezing, I don’t notice it.
