Bolognese Sauce (ragù alla bolognese in Italian, also known by its French name sauce bolognaise) is a meat based sauce for pasta originating in Bologna, Italy. Bolognese sauce is sometimes taken to be a tomato sauce but authentic recipes have only a very small amount of tomato, perhaps a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste.

The people of Bologna traditionally serve their famous ragù with freshly made

tagliatelle (tagliatelle alla bolognese). Less traditionally, the sauce is served with rigatoni or used as the stuffing for lasagne or cannelloni.

Preparation
Recipes differ greatly from a very classic and time-consuming ragù alla bolognese to a much simpler and quicker sugo di carne (‘meat sauce’). A simple but authentic form of ragù alla bolognese may be made as follows.

• Prepare a soffritto of finely chopped carrots, onions and celery and other aromatics in olive oil.
• Brown finely minced meat (beef flank and pancetta) in the soffritto. (As a short cut, one can use ground meat instead of minced, but the texture will suffer. Furthermore, such meat is rarely lean and the sauce is liable to be excessively greasy.)
• Add a half-glass of white wine and let it reduce.
• Add small amounts of tomato sauce and stock.
• Simmer very gently until the meat softens and begins to break down into the liquid medium. This may take upward of four hours, classically one to two hours is enough.
• Cream or milk is added about ten to fifteen minutes before cooking is completed.

The recipe issued in 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina confines the ingredients to beef, pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and milk. However, different recipes, far from the Bolognese tradition, make use of chopped pork, chicken or goose liver along with the beef and/or veal for variety, or use butter with olive oil. Also, to make a richer sauce, prosciutto, mortadella, or porcini mushrooms can be added to the soffritto. Sometimes some fresh pork sausage meat (salsiccia) can be added to the minced meat.

Modern interpretations
Heston Blumenthal recently as part of his BBC series "in search of perfection" where he reinvents staple foods of the British diet, provided a 45 minute analysis of bolognaise, including visiting Bologna and neighbouring towns in search of the most typifying example of the dish. His culminating recipe was based on two principals - richness of the sauce, whilst still providing reminiscence of the British interpretation of the dish "like mum would make it". This included some non-traditional ingredients, including pork, garlic, Worcester sauce, Nam Pla (thai fermented fish sauce), and tarragon. He also stewed the sauce for 4 hours, and used butter instead of cream to "finish" the sauce.

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