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Ravioli with Spinach

A stuffed pasta dish filled with spinach, butter, breadcrumbs, and egg yolks, served with parmesan and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Blanch and chop the spinach.

  2. In a stewpan, combine spinach with hot butter and reduce moisture while stirring.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then add bread crumbs and gravy or cream.

  4. Boil for 2-3 minutes, stirring, then remove from heat and mix in egg yolks until thickened.

  5. Let the mixture cool, then divide into nut-sized pieces on ravioli paste.

Shape and cook

  1. Wet the intervals with water, cover with another sheet of paste, and seal the edges with a cutter.

  2. Cut out the ravioli and cook in salted boiling water for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Drain and layer on a dish, sprinkling with grated parmesan and basting with tomato sauce mixed with clarified 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. 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the filling and adds moisture and a green, earthy flavor.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and thicken it as they set with gentle heat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb excess moisture from the spinach so the filling holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the spinach filling.
Gravy or raw cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the filling texture.

The step that matters

Thickening the filling with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so they must be mixed in off the heat after boiling. If added over direct heat or too hot, they can scramble and make the filling grainy instead of smooth and binding.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, bread, cream, egg):

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, bread, cream, egg. 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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