A tasty history of ravioles du Dauphiné plus an easy courgette gratin recipe

I am a lazy cook. Because of this, I am always on the lookout for kitchen shortcuts. Some of my favourites include shop-bought puff pastry and soups, both of which I have written about before. But French supermarkets are a goldmine of cooking cheats if you know what to choose. Cue ready-made ravioles.

Not the Italian kind but French ravioles, known as les ravioles du Dauphiné. These are a regional speciality, but you can find them in most large French supermarkets, in the chilled pasta section. The sheets are sold in packets, consisting of rows of tiny rectangles of thin pasta dough filled with a mixture of fromage frais and either comté or emmental cheese, with added parsley, which gives the filling a pale green tint.

Supermarket ravioles are a modern thing because, for generations, no shop supplied les ravioles du Dauphiné. You made them yourself, or paid a ravioleuse, a travelling farm-to-farm saleswoman who would roll dough and fill it to order. It was a rural trade centred on the Royans, the stretch of the Drôme and Isère departments around Romans-sur-Isère, Bourg-de-Péage, Saint-Marcellin and Pont-en-Royans.

According to one story, one of these women, Marie-Louise Gélibert, born in 1863, grew up in her parents’ café facing the town hall in Romans-sur-Isère. In 1885, she married the restaurateur Annet Maury and stopped her door-to-door trade. When she later inherited the family café, she began serving her own ravioles to customers. She earned the nickname ‘la Mère Maury’ and continued making ravioles by hand into her seventies. She died in 1941 but not before she trained her grandson Maurice Donnadieu in the craft. He opened a raviole shop under her name in 1956, bought a raviole-making machine in 1957 and ‘Mère Maury’ became a registered trademark in 1997.

The raviole’s official protection came in stages. It gained a national appellation d’origine designation in 1989, then Label Rouge status in 1998. The EU-level IGP (indication géographique protégée) followed in 2009, secured by an association of local producers defending what they called the “véritable raviole du Dauphiné”.

That association, the Association de Défense pour la Véritable Raviole du Dauphiné, was founded in 1982 by the region’s main industrial producers, before any of these protections existed. It drove the whole process: appellation in 1989, Label Rouge in 1998, IGP in 2009. It still governs the IGP today, though its membership has changed.

The IGP cahier des charges is specific: the dough must use soft wheat flour, fresh eggs, oil and salt; the filling needs at least 40% Comté AOP or Emmental français Est-Central IGP, plus fresh cheese (fromage frais) and a minimum 4% parsley. Production is restricted to a defined zone in the Drôme and Isère, the same Royans country once travelled by the ravioleuses.

By the 1990s, les ravioles had moved past regional shops into supermarkets nationwide, sold in standard plaques of 48 small squares (six rows of eight), under producer brands like Ravioles Saint Jean and Ravioles du Dauphin, and packaged for supermarket private labels including Reflets de France.

They make a lovely, light dish, usually sauced with just cream. When I see them on a menu I am inclined to order them, as when I have bought the ravioles to make at home: disaster. They collapse, stick to one another, or both. I have tried simmering rather than boiling. I have tried simmering in small batches. I have tried lifting them out with a slotted spoon rather than tipping them into a colander. I have kept cooking time to 30 seconds or as soon as they float to the surface. Never have I managed to cook them successfully.

But leafing through my recipe file recently, I stumbled on a recipe from a French magazine for a gratin made with courgettes and ravioles. The sheets are used like fresh lasagne, layered between rows of courgettes and cream. Absolute genius. Adding tarragon is not essential, but it does add something distinctive.

 Keep the ravioles in the fridge until needed; they are hard to handle when unchilled, and you may find it easier to slice the sheets in half lengthwise, less fiddly – but only just. I used crème fraîche, though you could also use béchamel. I will also try this with thin slices of butternut squash in place of the courgettes, using a torn sage leaf or two instead of tarragon.

Recipe: Gratin of courgettes and ravioles

To serve four. Preheat the fan oven to 170°C. Generously butter a gratin dish. Slice 1kg (about three) courgettes into thin rounds. Arrange one-third of the courgette rounds in the dish, season well, top with one-third of the ravioles, separating the sheets carefully. Spread over one-third of the crème fraîche mixture. 

Repeat the layering until all the ingredients are used up, finishing with a layer of crème fraîche. Scatter over about 75g of grated cheese. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking for 20–25 minutes more until nicely browned on top.