Spaghetti alla Bolognese,
Spaghetti Bolognese, or
Spaghetti Bolognaise in a form popular outside of
Italy, consists of a
meat sauce served on a bed of spaghetti with a good sprinkling of grated
Parmigiano cheese.
In recent decades, the dish has become very popular in
Sweden and
Denmark as
spagetti och köttfärssås, in Swedish, and
spaghetti og kødsovs in Danish, especially among children. It is also popular in the
United Kingdom (where it is colloquially abbreviated to
spag bol or
spag bog) and has become a staple of the British dinner table. In the
United States as well, the term 'bolognese' is often applied to a tomato-and-ground-beef sauce that bears little resemblance to ragù served in Bologna.
Chinese people often use the term "Western
zhajiang mian" to refer to spaghetti bolognese, alluding to its superficial similarities with the traditional Chinese noodle dish of
zhajiang mian as both are dry noodles covered with a thick ragù mainly made of minced meat. This provides an interesting symmetrical perspective to Westerners referring to zhajiang mian as "Chinese spaghetti".