Ravioli
1 1/2 cups flour 1/2 egg Warm water 1/4 cup cracker crumbs 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese 1/4 cup chopped cooked spinach 1 egg Chicken stock Salt Pepper Sift flour on a board, make depression in centre, drop in one-half egg, and moisten with warm water to a stiff dough. Knead until smooth, cover, and let stand ten minutes; then roll as thin as a sheet of paper, using a rolling-pin. Cut in strips as long as paste, and two and three-fourth inches wide, using a pastry jagger. Mix cracker crumbs, spinach, and egg; moisten with stock and season with salt and pepper. Put mixture by three-fourths teaspoon on lower half of strips of paste, two inches apart. Fold upper part of paste over lower part. Press edges together and between mixture with tips of thumbs, then cut apart, using pastry jagger. Cook ten minutes in the liquor in which a fowl has been cooked, take up with skimmer, arrange a layer on hot serving dish, sprinkle generously with grated Parmesan cheese, cover with Tomato Sauce; repeat twice and serve at once.
A plain egg-and-water pasta with a meatless spinach and crumb filling, boiled in the broth from a stewed fowl. The instructions are sound; only the units and a few unstated quantities need translating.
- Half an eggBeat a whole egg, weigh or eyeball half (about 25 g, roughly 1 tablespoon plus two teaspoons), and reserve the rest. Add warm water a teaspoon at a time until the dough just comes together stiff — this is a firm dough, not a soft one.
- Rest and rollTen minutes of rest is the minimum for the gluten to relax; twenty to thirty is better and makes the rolling much easier. "Thin as a sheet of paper" is the hinge of the whole recipe — if the sheet is thick the ravioli will be leathery after ten minutes in stock. A pasta machine at its second-thinnest setting gets there faster than a rolling-pin.
- Pastry jaggerA jagger is a small fluted cutting wheel on a handle. A fluted pizza wheel or a crimped ravioli cutter does the same job; the zigzag edge helps the seal hold.
- Cracker crumbsThese would usually have been plain soda crackers, common crackers or water biscuits, finely rolled. Unseasoned dry breadcrumbs are the nearest substitute; skip anything already salted or herbed, since the filling is seasoned separately.
- Squeeze the spinachCooked spinach holds a surprising amount of water, and wet filling will blow the seams open in the pot. Wring it dry in a towel before chopping, then moisten with stock only until the mixture just holds together.
- The cooking liquid"The liquor in which a fowl has been cooked" is simply chicken broth; any unsalted or lightly salted stock works. Keep it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil so the parcels do not burst, and check one at eight minutes — thin paste can be done before ten.
- The ParmesanThe half cup listed among the ingredients is not for the filling; it is the sprinkling between the three layers on the serving dish. Grate it fresh.
- Tomato SauceThe recipe assumes a tomato sauce made elsewhere in the book. Any plain cooked tomato sauce, thin enough to pour, serves; you will want about two cups for the three layers.
- YieldA cup and a half of flour makes roughly forty to fifty small ravioli — two modest servings as a main course, four as a first course.
The meatless filling of spinach, crumbs, cheese and egg is closer to the Ligurian and Genoese tradition of green ravioli than to the meat-stuffed versions that later became standard in American Italian restaurants, and the practice of cooking the parcels directly in the broth from a boiled fowl — rather than in plain water — is old and thrifty, borrowing the stock's flavour for the pasta and losing nothing. Parmesan and the pastry jagger both appear here without explanation, which suggests the writer expected readers to know them.