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Ravioli Soup
Prepare and poach the ravioli as in the last recipe. Drain them, and put them into a soup tureen. Pour over them two quarts of good strong veal or game stock, add a glassful of Madeira, and serve very hot. Send a plateful of grated Parmesan to table with the soup. Time, five minutes to poach the ravioli. Sufficient for ten or twelve persons.
A brothy first course rather than a bowl of sauced pasta: the whole dish stands or falls on the stock, which must be strong enough to taste of something on its own and hot enough to stay hot in a cold tureen.
- Heat the tureen and the stockNothing is cooked after assembly, so the stock should go in at a rolling simmer and the tureen should be scalded with boiling water first; a cold china tureen will pull the temperature of the broth down quickly.
- Two quarts, which quartsCassell's is working in imperial measure, so two quarts is 80 fl oz, roughly 2.4 US quarts or 2.3 litres. For ten or twelve people that is about a cup of broth each, correct for a first course.
- A glassful of Madeira"A glassful" in Victorian recipes is generally taken as a wineglass, variously reckoned at about 2 to 4 fl oz. Add it to the hot stock off the heat, or directly in the tureen, so the aroma is not driven off; a dry or medium Sercial or Verdelho suits savoury stock better than a sweet Bual.
- The stock is the recipeVeal stock here means a clear, well-reduced brown or white veal broth, not a thickened jus. Game stock made from pheasant, partridge or venison bones is the more interesting choice and stands up to the Madeira. A weak stock cannot be rescued at the tureen.
- Five minutes is for their ravioliFive minutes suits hand-rolled pasta of the period; the filling comes from the preceding entry, which is not reproduced here. Thin fresh ravioli today are done in three to four minutes, frozen ones in five to six; poach at a bare shiver rather than a boil so the seams hold.
- Poach them apartThe instruction to poach, drain and then dress with stock is deliberate. Cooking the pasta in the soup itself clouds it with starch and leaves the broth flat instead of clear.
- Parmesan at tableGrate it coarsely from a whole piece just before serving; pre-grated cheese is usually dusted with starch to stop it caking and melts poorly into hot broth.
- ServingTen to twelve as a first course, as the recipe states, or fewer as a more substantial serving with bread.
Ravioli in brodo — filled pasta served in a clear meat broth rather than under a sauce — is a long-established Italian treatment of the form. Madeira, sherry and Marsala all turn up in late-Victorian soup recipes as a last-minute lift. The reliance on a preceding recipe for the ravioli themselves is typical of the dictionary format. The plate of grated Parmesan sent separately to table is the one unmistakably Italian gesture in an otherwise thoroughly Anglo-French assembly.