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Raviolis Farce

Ravioli filled with a mixture of ground fowl, curd, cheese, spinach, and eggs, baked with Madeira and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Raviolis Farce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

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

  2. Add fresh curd, grated Parmesan, blanched spinach, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and raw egg yolks. Mix until smooth.

Shape the ravioli

  1. Roll out pasta and place small balls of the filling on it, about 2 inches apart.

  2. Fold the pasta over the filling and seal with your thumb.

  3. Cut into half-moons with a fluted cutter.

  4. Let the raviolis dry on a dish for some time.

  5. Blanch the raviolis in boiling broth for 15 minutes.

  6. Drain the raviolis on a napkin.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a soup tureen.

  2. Layer raviolis and grated cheese alternately, finishing with cheese on top.

  3. Moisten with Madeira and gravy.

  4. Bake in a slow oven until heated through.

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 and enrich it, helping it hold together when cooked.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty depth and browns on top during baking.
Fresh curd
Adds moisture and mild richness to the filling.
Fowl white meat
Provides the main body and protein of the filling.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aroma to the moistened layers.

The step that matters

Blanch the raviolis in boiling broth for 15 minutes. Cooking the pasta fully before baking sets the dough and filling so the parcels keep their shape and do not turn soggy during the final bake.

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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