Like an artwork, preparing a good ragù, or meat sauce, requires patience. In both Bologna and Naples, the lower classes created this sauce to maximize flavor from what little meat they could afford. But Italy has many ragùs.
French term
The name itself actually comes from France, where ragout refers to any stewed dish containing diced meat, fish, or vegetables. It isn’t clear when the term arrived in Italy, but ragù was well known to aristocrats from the Renaissance onwards, generally as a second course, and only later used to enhance pasta. Then it went from the tables of the upper classes to those of the general populace, and the term eventually extended to all Italian meat sauces.
The Bolognese recipe
As is the case with lasagna, Bologna and Naples have been vying for supremacy in the ragù saga. According to the scholar Lynne Rossetto Kasper, author of The Italian Country Table, the origins of Bolognese ragù date back to the rich courts and noble families of the 16th century. While it’s hard to identify a “genuine” historic ragù recipe, the Bologna chapter of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina registered one at the Bologna Chamber of Commerce in 1982.
The recipe contains coarsely minced beef (flank, chuck, or brisket cuts), pancetta, carrots, celery, onions, tomato sauce or peeled tomatoes, dry white wine, whole milk, a little broth, extra virgin olive oil or butter, salt, pepper and half a glass of heavy cream (optional). Fry the pancetta lightly with the carrots, celery, and onion, then add the minced meat followed by the white wine. After the meat has cooked in the wine a bit, add the tomato sauce. The ragù should be cooked for at least two hours over a low flame, adding stock from time to time, as well as a dash of milk to temper the acidity of the tomato. Toward the end, add salt and pepper to taste. In Bologna, it’s customary to add heavy cream if the sauce is to be paired with dry pasta—though it's not standard for when it's served with tagliatelle.
It's ever-beloved
Pellegrino Artusi, the 19th-century businessman and cookbook author, is said to have been the first to pour ragù on pasta, rather than have it as a second course. The combination was so successful nationally that the Fascist regime even imposed the use of the Italianized term ragutto. At the same time, Italian immigrants in America and beyond turned spaghetti alla bolognese, a distant relative of the Bolognese ragù, into an Italian cuisine staple. According to Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of an English fast-food chain, Bolognese pasta “is now the second most popular dish served in the homes of Great Britain.”
From the Seine to Vesuvius
The earliest documents mentioning Neapolitan ragù date back to the 18th century. The term ragù also appears in two old-school cookbooks: Vincenzo Corrado's Cuoco galante/The Gallant Cook (1773) and well as Ippolito Cavalcanti's Cucina teorica pratica/Theoretical and Practical Cooking (1847). During this time, the sauce wasn't made with tomatoes.
The first evidence of tomato in ragù dates back to Carlo Dal Bono, who writes in Usi e Costume di Napoli /Uses and Customs of Naples (1857), “Sometimes, after it’s covered with grated cheese, [the pasta] is tinged with a purplish or reddish color when the tavern-owner covers the cheese with tomato sauce or ragù, like dew on top of flowers.” So it’s probable that the French term ragout was imported into Italy via Naples during the 18th century – when France was in vogue, especially at court – along with other French-derived terms like sartù, gattò, crocché or puré.
All in the Meats
Initially, ragù was a Sunday dish, acting as a first course on top of pasta and then as a second course on its own. Ragù was made with a mixture of beef — typically the least expensive front cuts, which needed to be cooked a long time. But many types of meat can be used in the preparation, including pork ribs (tracchie or tracchiulelle), the rind roll (cotica), the Neapolitan meatball, and the chop – the latter resembles a roll stuffed with garlic, pine nuts, raisins, parsley, and Pecorino Romano. Usually the preparation of ragù starts early in the morning, as it needs to cook very slowly to become a thick and creamy sauce.
The old-school way
Traditionally, ragù is cooked in a terracotta pot, in which the onions, carrots, veal shank, Neapolitan chops, pork ribs, fresh sausages (not all versions), and pork rinds are browned in olive oil. Then it's simmered with white wine until reduced. Add tomato paste (not in all recipes) and tomato sauce, and add salt, then bring to a boil. The heat is then lowered until the sauce starts to boil very slowly – it needs to cook like this for around six hours. Once cooked, the pork should be removed from the sauce, while the other meats should cook in the pot until the end. At this point, the sauce can be used to top the pasta, together with Parmigiano and fresh basil, while the “big chunks” of meat comprise the second course.
Other variations
Some versions don’t even use minced meat, opting instead for larger pieces. In Umbria, for example, it’s prepared with veal, pork meat, and sausage while the Basilicata sauce features a local pork offal salami (salame pezzente). In Bari (Puglia), the ragù includes lamb. Minced meat does come back into play, though, for the Sardinian ragù. Ultimately, when it comes to this cherished meat sauce, there are practically as many variations as there are regions in Italy.