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Weird History Food is here for your lunch meat needs. The history of bologna or baloney has a storied history both in both Italy as well as America, which, thanks to German immigrants, gave the rise to American kids' favorite TV jingle -- My baloney has a first name it's O-S-C-A-R. We will spare you the rest, but get your white bread and mayo ready, because we are going on a bologna trip. And that's no baloney.
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Who among us hasn't stumbled home after a night out
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stepped into the kitchen and opened the fridge, only to find it empty
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Except for a dog-eared package of bologna and half a squeeze bottle of mayo
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Do you sulk? Let the refrigerator door swing shut while you mope off to bed
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But what is bologna? You eat it, you love it, but can you wax poetic about it
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Today on Weird History Food, we're going to talk about the history of bologna
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Okay, time to get to the bottom of my baloney. What it isn't is a mystery meat, despite popular belief
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Bologna, or balona, or baloney, whatever your pronunciation, is pork, beef, chicken, turkey, or a combination thereof
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that is finely ground with fat, salt, and spices, a delicious seasoned meat paste
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There might be nondescript ts in there, fatty cuts and butchery byproducts like organ meat
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but let's just leave it at that as far as the mystery surrounding bologna goes
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The spices can include black pepper, myrtle berries, nutmeg, allspice, celery seed, and coriander
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and are identified only as flavorings or spices on the ingredient label
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This tasty mixture is shaped into a loaf and cooked and sliced and packaged
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for your use as a meaty hangover suppressor. The best meats come in loaves
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Ask for bologna in Italy and the Italians will wince at your pronunciation and then point to a spot on the map in the north-central part of the country
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In Italy, Bologna, not pronounced bologna, is primarily a city, not a cold cut
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And Bologna is where the thick Italian sausage called mortadella originated centuries ago
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Mortadella, bologna's exalted ancestor, was considered a delicacy. It was made by grinding pork meat into a paste that was mixed with cubed fat and spices
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stuffed into a casing, and cooked. The sausage takes its name from the Italian mortallo, or mortar, which was used to break down pork
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Its full name is mortallo della carne di maiale, mortadella for short
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Che buona mortadella. The pigs from which mortadella was made were so important a commodity that
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As far back as the year 1000, the forests they inhabited were measured not in surface area, but by the number of animals they could support
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Mortadella was so prized that an organization of charcuterers was founded in the 1200s to police its method of production
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By the 1700s, if you were a salumiere, someone who made salumi or cured meats, and your mortadella didn't cut the mustard, so to speak
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you could be fined or even stretched on the rack, and your inventory could be destroyed
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Subpar mortadella, therefore, might have been called something completely different, the name of the town in which it was made, something like Bologna
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So why doesn't bologna look like mortadella? The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that the ingredients in bologna be comminuted
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or reduced to minute particles. Thus, the fat and spices in bologna are invisible
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whereas those in mortadella are extremely visible and give the sausage an appetizingly mottled appearance
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That's right. Hide your shame, bologna. Hide your delicious, delicious shame. We've determined that our pink paste subject was probably named for the city in which it
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or its predecessor, Mortadella, was born. But in Italy, that city is pronounced Bologna
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So why do we call this sweetmeat bologna Linguist Mark Lieberman theory postulates that anglicized pronunciations of Italian place names like Italia Sicilia and Lombardia become clipped
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So Italia becomes Italy, Sicilia becomes Sicily, and so on. Lieberman also points out that the city of Bologna
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was called Bononia way back in the day. So it sounds plausible that Bologna might be
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an anglicized version of the city's name. Bologna. Bologna. Other theories cite early Italian-Americans
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penchant for shortening or changing the pronunciation of Italian words as they imported them into American English dialect
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Take, for example, rigat for ricotta, or prosciutto for prosciutto. It could be that Bologna was shortened to bologn
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and eventually the Y was tacked on at the end. Or perhaps the pronunciation change
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was as simple as the influence of the British word Blarney, or the widespread Irish name Maloney, both of which would have been common words around
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the time the pronunciation change happened. Whatever the origin, lexicographer Ben Zimmer
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notes that the knee pronunciation of the sausage was widely used in the 19th century
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around the time other Italian place names were likely being anglicized. A humor piece being
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published in 1857 referring to Maloney sausage is the earliest example he's found. Sounds like a
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Chicago B-Cop ordering lunch. The point is, nobody really knows how the change in pronunciation came
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about. And for that matter, how did the word baloney come to be synonymous with nonsense
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Well, that's a whole other subject to sink your teeth into. That's a lot of baloney
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Despite its Italian lineage, American baloney probably traces its particular ancestry to
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German immigrants who settled in the Midwest in the 1800s. They brought with them the sausages
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and methods of production of their homeland, worsts of every variety. The best of the worst
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if you will. One of these immigrants was Oskar Ferdinand Mayer, who came to the US from Bavaria
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with his family in 1873 at age 14. Just like that, everyone's ears just perked up. Yeah
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that Oskar Mayer. He apprenticed with a butcher and then spent six years working in a meatpacking
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plant. By 1880, he was itching to go into business for himself. He wrote to a brother, Gottfried
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in Germany, and encouraged him to take up sausage making. Gottfried apparently liked the idea
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learned his chops, pun intended, then joined Oscar in the US. The pair leased a failing meat market
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in Chicago in 1883 and opened up shop. On their first day, they made $59, the equivalent of about
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$1,700 in today's money. So the company's prospects seemed good. So good, in fact, that when their
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lease expired in 1888, the landlord refused to renew, thinking he might go back into business
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for himself and capitalize on the Meyers' reputation. Oscar and his brother moved on
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borrowed $10,000, and bought their own building nearby. Another brother, Max, came on as the
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business's accountant. The new venture was an immediate success, with neighbors flocking to
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the shop for old world sausages and meat. Over the nearly century and a half since Oscar Mayer has prospered
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not only due to its products, but also as a result of its innovation, think vacuum-sealed packaging, which prevents waste, or pre-sliced bacon
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Yeah, really think about pre-sliced bacon. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I mean, look how thin that is
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See, that's all surface area. The taste has nowhere to hide. And of course, there was the marketing
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In 1929 Oscar Mayer Ubiquitous Yellow Band Trademark Made its debut And continues to exist in modified form to this day The Wienermobile and its pilot a little person known as Little Oscar first appeared in 1936 and would be a part of the company promotional strategy for decades
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These days, the cheeky Oscar Mayer fleet includes a hot dog delivering Wiener Mini, a Wiener Cycle, a Wiener Drone, and a Wiener Rover, in addition to the classic Wienermobile
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And then there are the jingles. Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer wiener
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That's what I truly like to be. Sorry, my version may have reminded you of the jingles, so it'll be in your head all day
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Maybe this will help. My baloney has a first name. It's O-S-A-R
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I always wanted to punch that kid. Baloney's popularity rose with that of all Oscar Mayer products
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but not solely because of the company's success. Along with technological advances in the 1920s came a faster pace of business
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Lunchtime began to lose its leisurely vibe, giving rise to the sandwich
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The New York Times proclaimed in 1924 that the day of the sandwich has arrived
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Men have no time to sit around leisurely waiting for large orders. They must grab a bite, preferably wholesome and satisfying, but essentially without delay
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So instead of a steaming plate of corned beef and cabbage or steak and onions, working men started tucking into shaved ham and cheese with horseradish and mustard between two slices of bread
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Or more likely, instead of tucking in, wrapping it to go. Unfortunately, the Great Depression struck just a few years later, following the stock market crash of 1929
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Suddenly, finding a quick bite to eat for lunch was no longer the problem
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Millions of Americans were having trouble finding anything to eat at all
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Soup kitchens appeared with long lines of the unemployed queuing up for something hot
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Meat was scarce and expensive. For those who could afford it, bologna was an economical alternative
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It kept well and was made of less expensive parts of the animal. That trend continued during the war years of the 1940s when, again
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meat was an expensive commodity and subjected to war rationing. In the workplace, sandwiches of bologna and other processed meats such as Spam were common for lunch
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A double-decker bologna soup! Workers might then go home for a dinner of fried bologna
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Bologna for every meal of the day was the cure weary Americans needed
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Bologna got another boost as a source of fuel for America's inquiring young minds
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In the opening years of the 20th century, most school kids went home for lunch
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In the 20s and 30s, however, many schools began offering free or low-cost lunches
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Since bologna was relatively inexpensive, it became a popular lunchtime staple. Then in 1946, President Truman signed the National School Lunch Act, establishing lunch programs nationwide
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Bologna fit the bill nicely. It was relatively cheap, filling, and easy to prepare, favored by students and harried lunch ladies alike
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One concoction that may stand out, especially for school kids in the South, the bologna boat
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a slice of bologna topped with mashed potatoes and cheese. Climb aboard. The mid-20th century also saw the rise of refrigeration and grocery store refrigerated sections
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Convenience foods like bologna, which were packaged in plastic and had a long shelf life, were popular with busy parents too
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But flavor and freshness do not always equate to a food's health benefits
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For this and other reasons not everybody is a bologna fan I hate bologna like more than anything else in the world
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Spit it out. No doubt, some of those school kids gagged on bologna sandwich day
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And more than one prison riot has been blamed on the meals inmates are fed
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many of which include cold bologna sandwiches, sometimes more than once a day
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Bologna contains high amounts of sodium, fat, and disconcerting-sounding ingredients like potassium acetate and sodium erythorbitate. Potassium acetate is used as a preservative
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and acidity regulator in food. But another of its applications is as a runway de-icer
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icy deliciousness. The World Health Organization has classified processed meats like bologna
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sausages, and deli ham as a group 1 carcinogen, which means that there's evidence that processed
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meats can increase your risk of cancer, especially of the bowel and stomach. So bologna is probably
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not an everyday food, if you're paying attention to your intake of sulfat and preservatives
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Despite its questionable health benefits and its reputation as cheap processed junk food
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bologna still finds its way onto the menu of butcher shops and fine dining establishments
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across America. Today, there are plenty of places to get high-end bologna. The Midwest is studded
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with old-world-type sausage bakers that sling the meat, like Eusingers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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Frick's Quality Meats in Washington, Missouri, Kogol's in Flint, Michigan, and the list goes on
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With all that delicious bologna at their disposal, it's only natural that chefs across the country
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would be putting it to use. Fried bologna sandwiches? We got them. Thick-cut, thin-shaved
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American cheese or cheddar, what's your pleasure? There are bologna salad sandwiches, German pasta
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salad with bologna, even mini corn dogs called French poodles, which incorporate that Midwestern
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classic ring bologna. In 2017, Bon Appetit named New Orleans restaurant Turkey and the Wolf the
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best restaurant of the year. The restaurant's fried bologna sandwich in particular received an
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extremely enthusiastic review from critic Andy Knowlton, who wrote, Chef owner Mason Hereford's take on a bologna sandwich had nothing in common with the mayo and Wonder Bread ones I grew up eating
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In his, three slices of locally made bologna were griddle fried, blanketed American cheese
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and stacked on thick cut, butter griddled Pullman slices with house-made hot mustard, Duke's brand mayo, and shreddice, what Mason calls shredded lettuce
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It was further crunchified with two fistfuls of vinegar brined potato chips
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That does sound like a pretty damn good sandwich. Chef Matt Bolas, who runs restaurants in Nashville and Louisville
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summed up bologna this way. Fried bologna is good for your soul
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Cold bologna can be just as delicious when done right. I mean, really, all bologna is good for the soul
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It's the food of the people. Bologna, the soulful deli meat of the people
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What's good for the soul is also good for the complexion, right? Bologna's popularity as a comfort food item isn't limited to menus
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Oscar Mayer is upping its bologna game with a recent foray into the world of skin care
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with the officially branded Oscar Mayer Bologna Hydrogel Sheet Face Mask. Hey, maybe that de-icer will strip the wrinkles from your complexion
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An Oscar Mayer marketing exec says the meaty facializer is inspired by those
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who used to playfully make masks out of their bologna as kids. This product was born as a modern day way to spark smiles for fans of Oscar Mayer and beauty enthusiasts alike
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And hey, if the masks are sold out, you can always make yours the old fashioned way