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RAGOUT

Volume 9 · 98 words · 1778 Edition

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, cray-fish, &c.

The ancients had a ragout called garum, made of the putrefied guts of a certain fish kept till it dissolved into a mere sauce, which was thought such a dainty, that, according to Pliny, its price equalled that of the richest perfumes.