Polpette al ragù – meatballs in ragù

The story of ’e purpette

’E purpette, meatballs in ragù, are made of minced meat with bread, milk, eggs and cheese, slow-cooked in Neapolitan ragù. In the Campanian tradition the mixture often includes parsley, raisins and pine nuts too. They were a fixture of Sunday lunch, born as a way to use up stale bread.

The ragù they cook in has a written history. Antonio Latini’s “raù”, at the end of the seventeenth century, still had no tomato; Francesco Leonardi added tomato to the stew in the early nineteenth century, and the “Cucina casereccia” of 1817 describes what is considered the first true prototype of ragù.

Eduardo De Filippo put ragù at the heart of “Sabato, domenica e lunedì” (1959): Donna Rosa Priore makes it on Saturday for Sunday lunch. In the poem “’O rraù”, Eduardo has a husband say, faced with a hurried sauce: “Chesta è carne c’ ’a pummarola”.