For dough
1/2 pound flour
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons lard

For filling
1/2 pound of curds*
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons sugar
Few drops of extract of vanilla

Lard for frying
Icing sugar for dusting

*Possibly, ricotta can be a good substitute if "curds" are not available

"Take 1/2 pound of flour, 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of lard.

Work this into a paste and roll out thin.

Take 1/2 pound of curds, add 1 egg, and the yolk of a second egg, 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar, a few drops of extract of vanilla. Mix well together and add to the paste as for other ravioli.

Then fry in lard until a golden brown.

Serve with powdered sugar."

The recipe was taken from the copyright-free cookbook entitled, "Simple Italian Cookery" by Antonia Isola. It was published in 1912 by Harper & Brothers. It was the first Italian cookbook published in English in the United States. The Italian name of the author, "Antonia Isola," was a pseudonym, chosen by her publisher to help give her collection of Italian recipes credibility. The author's real name was Mabel Earl McGinnis. She was born in 1876 in the United States; as an adult she spent a lot of time in Italy, in particular, in and around the city of Rome. Despite the fact that she is credited as being the very first individual to put together a book of Italian recipes for the American public, she did not publish any other book after her successful debut. To view or download her entire cookbook, "Simple Italian Cookery," which is now in the public domain, visit www.archive.org. Photo: Mary Melfi................ P.S. I tried out this recipe and found the ricotta filling very tasty. However, I was unable to make the dough using the recipe cited in the book, as the end result felt and looked like the pie crust bottom of a cheese cake -- the type one gets with crushed Graham crackers, meaning the dough crumbled. Perhaps a more skilled home cook could have managed to roll it and get the desired thinness but I wasn't able to do it. I had the bright idea of adding an egg to bind the dough which may Not have been the best solution as the cooked pastry dough ended up being rather tough. I complained about this to my friend, Marisa Pastore, a much better home cook than I could ever hope to be, and she suggested I should have added water rather than an egg to the dough mixture, as this might have made the dough softer and more malleable. Also, this type of dough is best when it is eaten warm rather than at room temperature. In any case, I was unable to use a pasta maker to roll out the dough, even though I had added an egg, so I had no alternative but to use a rolling pin -- a difficult task. Of course, I used ricotta instead of cheese curds for the filling. I suppose cheese curds are closer in texture to cottage cheese than they are to ricotta, but there was no way I would use cottage cheese over ricotta, as I love ricotta and dislike cottage cheese. O.K., so that's my personal preference and not at all interesting.... Some old recipes are quite wonderful, but many of them are difficult to duplicate.

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