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Ravioles for Soups
Divide one pound of noodles into halves, and roll them both out very thin, having them of an equal size and as nearly square as possible. Put any kind of forcemeat into a paper funnel and squeeze it out in small lumps, in rows, over one of the halves, keeping the lumps about one inch apart, cover with the remaining half of the paste, pressing it down between the forcemeat, and then cut out the ravioles with a small, round tin cutter, say about one and one-half inches in diameter. As they are done, place them upon a well-floured cloth, using only half of it, and covering over with the other half. When all the ravioles are cut, plunge them into a saucepan of boiling water, and boil them for three minutes; then remove the pan from the fire, put on the cover, and let it stand for four minutes longer. Place the ravioles on a sieve to drain, put them in a sautepan, pour over four ounces of melted butter, and strew over a few tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese. Warm them for a minute, remove the pan from the fire, and toss it; then remove the ravioles with a skimmer, place them on a dish, sprinkle them over with a little more grated Parmesan cheese, and pour over a few tablespoonfuls of hot glaze, mixed with an equal quantity of tomato sauce. A tureenful of rich soup should always accompany these.
Oscar's ravioli are cut round with a plain cutter and finished in butter, cheese and meat glaze, then sent out alongside a tureen of soup rather than in it. A few of his terms need translating before you start.
- "One pound of noodles"He means fresh egg noodle paste — pasta dough, not dried noodles. A dough of about 2 1/2 cups flour to 3 eggs plus a little water and salt comes out near a pound, and divides into the two equal, roughly square sheets he asks for.
- Seal before you cut, not afterThe recipe says only to press the top sheet down between the lumps. Brush the bottom sheet with water or beaten egg between the mounds first; a dry seam on rolled pasta will open in the water and the filling will escape.
- Paper funnelA cornet of parchment rolled to a point, i.e. a disposable piping bag. Any piping bag with a half-inch plain tip does the same job.
- ForcemeatAny well-seasoned ground filling — veal, chicken, or leftover braised meat pounded with a little of its own sauce, egg and breadcrumb to bind. It should be firm enough to hold a lump when piped, and it must be cooked or safely cookable, since three minutes in water will not bring a raw pork filling to temperature.
- The three-plus-four minutesBoiling briefly, then covering off the heat to finish in residual heat, is a sound method for thin filled pasta and keeps the seams from bursting. It assumes very thin dough and small ravioli; rolled much thicker, the doubled seam may still be underdone, so test one.
- "Glaze"Glace de viande — brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets like rubber when cold. A commercial demi-glace or veal glace, thinned slightly, is the practical substitute; mixed half and half with tomato sauce as he directs.
- Four ounces of butterHalf a cup for a pound of pasta is generous by modern taste. Two ounces will coat them adequately, and the buttering is a warming step, not a sauté — do not let it brown.
- Round cuttingA 1 1/2-inch round cutter leaves a great deal of scrap between the circles. Cutting square with a fluted wheel gives the same result with no waste; the round shape is presentation only.
- Yield and serviceA pound of dough makes roughly 50 to 60 small ravioli, enough for six as the accompaniment he intends. "For soups" means served on a dish beside a clear or rich soup, not floated in it.
Oscar Tschirky was the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel rather than its chef, but the book issued under his name draws on the hotel's French repertoire, and this entry shows how Italian pasta entered that repertoire: as a garnish or accompaniment to soup rather than a course in its own right. Ravioles is a French form of the word, and the finish — butter, Parmesan, meat glaze cut with tomato sauce — belongs to the classical repertoire of small savory garnishes; Escoffier's Guide Culinaire, which appeared in 1903, a few years after Oscar's book, handles ravioli in a broadly similar way. Filled pasta itself is far older than any of this, documented in Italian sources from the fourteenth century onward, where the filling was often greens and cheese as much as meat. Characteristic of the period is the assumption that a hotel pantry had meat glaze on hand at all times, reduced from the day's stock, so that a cook could simply spoon some over a dish of pasta on the way to the dining room.