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Ravioli Soup

A soup of hand‑made ravioli filled with fowl, curd, cheese, spinach, and egg yolks, baked with Madeira and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ravioli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the white meat of the fowl in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Add the curd, Parmesan, spinach, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and egg yolks. Mix well.

Shape the ravioli

  1. Roll out pasta dough and cut into circles.

  2. Place small balls of filling on the dough, fold over, and seal the edges.

  3. Let the raviolis dry for a while.

  4. Blanch the raviolis in boiling broth for 15 minutes, then drain.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a soup tureen lining with butter.

  2. Layer raviolis and grated cheese alternately until filled.

  3. Pour in Madeira and a ladleful of gravy.

  4. Place in a slow oven to reduce the gravy and gratinate.

  5. Brown the top with a salamander.

  6. Serve with the remaining clear consomme.

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. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Parmesan cheese + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the filling so it holds together and sets softly when cooked.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty depth to the filling and browns in the layers.
Curd
Adds moisture and creaminess to the meat filling.
Old madeira
Adds sweetness and rich aroma to the gravy as it reduces.

The step that matters

Place in a slow oven to reduce the gravy and gratinate. A slow oven lets the gravy reduce and concentrate gradually without drying out the raviolis, while the cheese melts and turns golden. Too hot an oven can scorch the top before the layers are heated through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, parmesan cheese, spinach, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, parmesan cheese, spinach, pepper, egg, butter. 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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