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Italian Ravioli

A ravioli made from boiled beet or endive leaves, curd, egg, Parmesan, and bread, served in salted water 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 or endive, then boil them in a little water.

  2. Squeeze out the water and chop the leaves finely, similar to spinach.

  3. Mix in half the quantity of curd, season, and blend well with an egg for each pound of mixture and Parmesan cheese.

Shape the ravioli

  1. Add enough grated bread to form long oval shapes, each about the size of an egg.

  2. Roll the ravioli in flour and drop them into salted boiling water.

Cook and serve

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

  2. Serve with a good 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 or endive
Forms the bulk of the filling and adds an earthy, vegetal flavour.
Curd
Adds moisture and a soft, creamy body to the filling.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds its shape inside the pasta.
Grated bread
Absorbs excess moisture so the filling can be shaped without becoming runny.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Shaping and boiling the ravioli. If the filling is too wet, the shapes can split open in boiling water. Squeezing out the leaves and binding with egg and bread helps the filling hold together while the pasta cooks through.

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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