RAGOUT, or RAGOO, a sauce, or seasoning, intended to rouse the appetite when lost or languishing.
This term is also used for any high-seasoned dish prepared of flesh, fish, greens, or the like: by stewing them with bacon, salt, pepper, cloves, and the like ingredients. We have ragouts of celery, of endive, asparagus, cock's combs, giblets, craw-fish, &c.
The ancients had a ragout called garum, made of the putrid guts of a certain fish kept till it dissolved into a mere simies, which was thought such a dainty, that, according to Pliny, its price equalled that of the richest perfumes.