Bolognese

What it actually is

The authentic Bolognese sauce (ragù alla bolognese) registered with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce in 1982 is a slow-cooked meat sauce with very little tomato — primarily minced beef and pork, white wine, milk, and a small amount of tomato paste. It’s cooked for 2–4 hours until the meat is tender and the sauce is dense.

This is quite different from what most of the world calls “bolognese” — a tomato-forward sauce served on spaghetti. Authentic ragù alla Bolognese is served on tagliatelle (the width of which, legend holds, matches the width of a strand of Rapunzel’s hair from Bologna’s towers).

Milk in the sauce

One of the counterintuitive ingredients in the classic recipe is whole milk, added early in the cooking process. It tenderises the meat and adds subtle sweetness, and it’s cooked away entirely before the wine is added.

The soffritto base

All Italian meat sauces begin with a soffritto — finely diced onion, celery, and carrot cooked in butter until soft. This base is what distinguishes a properly made ragù from a seasoned mince.

Serving

Traditionally served only on tagliatelle or used as the meat layer in lasagne. The now-ubiquitous spaghetti bolognese is considered a northern Italian heresy — spaghetti’s round cross-section doesn’t hold the thick sauce effectively.