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Ravioli, Italian

A stuffed pasta dish with chicken, spinach, ham, anchovies, shallot, yolks, and Parmesan, served in buttered stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pasta and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 67 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Ravioli, Italian

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a firm, smooth pasta dough and roll it out as thin as possible, dusting with minimal flour.

Fill the ravioli

  1. Prepare the forcemeat by finely mincing the chicken or game and mixing it with borage or spinach, ham, anchovies, shallot, yolks, Parmesan, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Cut the pasta into 2-inch rounds using a fluted cutter, moisten the edges with water, and place a small ball of forcemeat on each round.

  3. Fold the pasta over the filling and pinch the edges tightly to seal.

  4. Let the ravioli dry briefly, then butter a saucepan and place them inside.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour a little boiling stock over the ravioli and simmer until the pasta is cooked.

  2. Drain the ravioli, place them on a dish, sprinkle with grated Parmesan, and add small pieces of butter on top.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pasta + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Borage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together76 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Pasta + boragetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pasta + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pasta flour dough
Forms a firm, thin wrapper that holds the filling while cooking.
Yolks
Bind the forcemeat so the filling holds together when cooked.
Chicken or game
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the filling.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling and the finished dish.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savoury flavour that enriches the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the ravioli. Pinching the edges tightly keeps the filling inside while the pasta simmers. Moistened edges bond the dough, so any gap lets filling escape into the stock.

Swap the borage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pasta, chicken, ham, shallot, parmesan cheese, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Boragethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pasta, chicken, ham, shallot, parmesan cheese, pepper, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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