Real Bolognese is a meat sauce that happens to contain a little tomato, not the tomato sauce with meat that most of us grew up on. That's only where the misconceptions start. It's never served on spaghetti. And Bologna guards the real thing so closely that the city registered the official recipe, right down to the exact width of the pasta, with the Chamber of Commerce.

We trace it from a cardinal's cook in the 1700s, whose ragù had no tomato in it at all, through Pellegrino Artusi's 1891 version to the recipe Bologna finally codified. Then we argue out every non-negotiable, from red wine versus white, to the surprising dairy that goes in before either (and the order that turns out to matter), to the fresh pasta the sauce was actually built to grip. There's even an ingredient the official recipe flatly bans that you'd never think twice about adding.

For the glass, The Academy, a gin Martini with fresh tomato water stirred in, named for the very institution that codified the sauce.

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Thanks to all of this week's partners:

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Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/