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Italian Ravioli

Ravioli made from beet and endive leaves, curd, egg, Parmesan, and bread, boiled and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 111 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Italian Ravioli

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash and pick the leaves of white beet and endive.

  2. Boil the leaves in a small amount of water until done.

  3. Squeeze out the water and chop the leaves finely.

  4. Mix in half the quantity of curd, an egg for each pound of mixture, Parmesan cheese, and enough grated bread to form a dough.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into oval forms, each about the size of an egg.

  2. Dust the ravioli with flour.

  3. Bring salted water to a boil and add the ravioli.

  4. Boil until they rise to the top, indicating they are done.

  5. Serve with gravy sauce or melted butter.

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. Endive + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Parmesan cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Endive + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Leaves of white beet
Provides the main bulk and earthy flavor of the filling.
Leaves of endive
Adds bulk and a slightly bitter green flavor to the filling.
Firm or hist curd
Binds the filling and adds moisture and mild richness.
Egg
Sets during cooking to help hold the filling together.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture so the mixture can form a workable dough.

The step that matters

Squeeze out the water and chop the leaves finely.. Excess water from the cooked greens dilutes the filling and makes the dough soft, so the shaped ravioli may fall apart in boiling water.

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parmesan cheese, bread, flour):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parmesan cheese, bread, flour. 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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