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Ravioli, Italian
Make a little firm smooth paste (see the next recipe). Roll it out as thin as thick paper, and sprinkle it with as little flour as possible. Make a forcemeat of fowl, veal, or fish, or take a godiveau; lay it in little heaps at equal distances on half the paste, and cover with the other half. With the fingers press the paste down between the little piles of forcemeat to make it adhere, then cut the whole into squares. Put these side by side in a dish, and boil them in bouillon for five minutes. Serve with grated cheese in a plate.
A compact, competent set of instructions that assumes you already know how to make pasta dough and a forcemeat. The gaps are in seasoning, sealing and cooking time rather than in technique.
- "See the next recipe"The cross-reference is to the pasta paste that follows; its exact proportions are not given here. What the present recipe asks for is a firm, smooth paste that will roll very thin, and a rested dough will fight the rolling pin less.
- "Thin as thick paper"Thin, but not translucent: a fraction of a millimetre rather than gossamer. A sheet with a little body to it suits a bouillon-cooked dumpling that has to hold its shape.
- GodiveauA classic French forcemeat of veal, beef suet and eggs, pounded smooth and often lightened with iced water or cream. Any well-seasoned fine forcemeat works; the point is that it should be smooth and bound, not crumbly, so it does not burst the seam.
- SealingThe hinge of the recipe. The instruction to flour as little as possible is there so the two sheets stick; if the paste has dried at all, brush the lower sheet lightly with water or beaten egg around each heap. Press out trapped air from the centre outwards before cutting -- air pockets are what split ravioli in the pot.
- Cook the filling first, at least in the mindFive minutes in barely simmering bouillon will cook the pasta and a thin layer of raw forcemeat, but a heap much bigger than a walnut will not reach a safe internal temperature. Keep the mounds to about a rounded teaspoon, or use a filling that is already cooked.
- Bouillon, not waterBoiling in stock is the older Italian practice and it seasons the pasta from the outside in. Keep it at a bare simmer -- a rolling boil batters the seams open. Straining the bouillon afterwards gives you a broth worth serving alongside.
- The cheese"Grated cheese in a plate" means it is handed round separately rather than stirred in; a hard grating cheese is the obvious choice, though the recipe does not name one. A ladle of the cooking bouillon over the ravioli before the cheese goes on keeps them from gluing together.
- YieldUnstated in the original, and not recoverable from it: the recipe gives no quantity of paste or forcemeat.
Cassell's places this among the Italian dishes it was collecting for British households in the late nineteenth century, when pasta beyond macaroni was still an exotic import. The instructions come by way of France rather than Italy directly -- the giveaways are godiveau and bouillon, both French professional-kitchen terms, and the recipe reads like a translation of the way a French chef would explain ravioli to an English cook. The origin of the name is disputed, with several rival derivations proposed, but filled pasta of this kind is documented in Italy by the thirteenth century, long predating tomato sauce; serving them in broth with grated cheese on the side, as here, is the older and still the more Northern Italian way. The vagueness about the filling -- fowl, veal, fish, or whatever forcemeat is to hand -- suggests a dish defined by improvisation rather than a fixed formula.