Newfoundlanders and Bologna: A Love Story

Newfies like their own kind of steak ▬ 

Sources: 

→ Coles, Terri. “Why Newfoundland Is Obsessed with Bologna.” MyRecipes, February 13, 2018, https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/why-newfoundland-is-obsessed-with-bologna. ||

→ Nolan, Dick. “Piece of Bologna.” The Best of Dick Nolan. 1975. YouTube, September 24, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2bgRLF8lc.  ||

→ Phillips, Kevin. The Bologna Cookbook. Flanker Press, 2014.  ||

→ Smellie, Sarah. “Beautiful Bologna: N.L. Restaurant Making Artisanal Version of Beloved Meat Stick.” The Canadian Press, January 10, 2021. ||

→ Red Island. In Pursuit of the Wild Bologna. Clode Sound, 1978. ||▬ 

Transcript

The province of Newfoundland has its own cuisine. Or, if that word sounds a little too fancy-pants for it, some foods and meals that are deeply traditional, and that virtually every Newfoundlander would know about, and frankly most likely have eaten regularly for years.

Bologna is one of those staples. It’s basically a prepared sausage meat and when you buy it in a store it is already fully cooked, in the sense that it’s not raw, like, say, pork or chicken would be. It’s one of those foods that has a long list of ingredients on the nutrition label, some of which I have no idea what they are or why they are included. So let’s have a look. Here’s the ingredient list for the bologna made by the Maple Leaf company:

pork, mechanically separated meats (pork and/or chicken), pork by-products, beef, water, modified wheat flour, modified corn starch, salt, wheat flour, potassium lactate, sodium erythorbate, sodium diacetate, onion powder, sodium nitrite, spice, garlic powder

So, as I read that, it’s essentially a pork product with some other meats as well, and then with other ingredients to give it flavour. Most of these are actually common, understandable ingredients, but now that I’m looking at this ingredient list perhaps for the first time in my life, I can’t help but look up the ones I don’t recognize at all. These are all from Wikipedia:

potassium lactate: “commonly used in meat and poultry products to extend shelf life and increase food safety.” This is the culinary use of potassium lactate. But it also has what Wikipedia calls a “fire fighting use,” that is, as an “extinguishing medium” in a certain brand of fire extinguishers. Well, I’m not exactly sure how to feel about that. I guess the best thing one could say is that potassium lactate is a pretty versatile compound.

OK, moving along:

sodium erythorbate: “it … [facilitates] a faster cure and retaining the pink coloring.” Alas there seems to be a theme here of versatile compounds: sodium erythorbate “has been implemented in the development of corrosion inhibitors for metals.” (No, I’m not making this up.)

sodium diacetate: “a colorless solid that is used in seasonings and as an antimicrobial agent” (that’s it!)

And finally:

sodium nitrite: Well, as we say in Newfoundland, lar’ t’underin’ jeezuz. The entry for this one in Wikipedia is very lengthy. It does cover its use as a “food additive and preservative,” but then goes on to talk its use in dyes, rubber, industrial grease, medications—but then also its use to commit suicide, its toxicity, and that it might cause cancer.

OK. So. Where was I? Right: let’s get off the label and get back to the delicious meat product.

I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and we had bologna in the house all the time. We typically ate it for breakfast, fried bologna and fried eggs, with toast and a glass of Tang. And sometimes for supper as well, with potatoes and sometimes some canned vegetables. Some ketchup.

But bologna in Newfoundland is definitely not unique to my generation. I talked to some of my family members, one who is 21 years older than me, and one who is 50 years younger, and found out a bit about how they eat bologna.

my brother Dave

my sister-in-law Ingrid

my mother Maxine

and my nephew Sam

But it’s not just the Jones family that likes bologna. One source says that Newfoundlanders consume about a third of all the bologna consumed in Canada, so that if you do the math: the province with 1.5% of the population of Canada eats 33% of the bologna. We apparently love the stuff, sodium nitrite or no sodium nitrite.

Your mileage may vary, as they say, but my experience has also been that when Newfoundlanders refer to bologna they mean Maple Leaf bologna. Just as fish always means cod and tinned evaporated milk is only the Carnation brand, the only respectable bologna in the province is Maple Leaf. Oh, there are other brands on sale, like Sunrise, but you don’t think that’s real bologna, do you?

Bologna is a part of Newfoundland culture well beyond it simply being a food that we eat a lot of. One of the jokes/legends is that bologna is actually a wild animal that you hunt in a bog. Once you get one, you cut off the legs and you somehow end up with a perfect Big Stick of bologna, conveniently and magically wrapped in that waxed cloth exterior. One of the best-known Newfoundland singers, the great Dick Nolan, has a song about bologna, where a Newfie is camping with two other guys and manages to snag the last piece of bologna they have. And a musical group called Red Island released an album in 1978 called In Pursuit of the Wild Bologna.

Lately, bologna is going a bit upscale. A restaurant in St. John’s called Chinched serves an artisanal bologna made in-house, with the slogan, Make Bologna Beautiful Again. It’s one of their best sellers. And ten years ago The Bologna Cookbook was published.

And one final note, about the origin and pronunciation of the word. Bologna goes back about a hundred years. The Oxford English Dictionary has a quotation from 1833, and bologna is called bologna because it was first made in Bologna, Italy. As for the pronunciation, this is a bit unscientific on my part, but I think the most common pronunciation in Newfoundland is baw-LOW-naw, and not the baw-LOW-nee that you hear elsewhere. Both the American Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary agree. I always liked how my Uncle Dick used to pronounce it though: BLOW-nee. Always good to keep it short.