Bill Davy
I dunno, Antonius, it seems to me you said back just about what I said in the first place vis a vis how many versions there are and what can go in there. I did leave out milk, which Artusi says use or not, same for butter or cream with him. It is very very meaty.
One thing, though, I would NEVER use tomato pure or paste in this. It has a dead taste in something like this. I used peeled tinned tomatoes in winter and peeled and chopped fresh ones in fall. Some versions are almost without or really without tomaties, when the milk would be more important.
That said, it has been some time since I used a recipe for rag, since it is something you make a lot for various uses. And each time it is different according to what the ingredients are like, whether I found chicken innards, whether I have a leftover sausage to use up. It's just like that here, you can't always get everything and it varies when you do get it. When I was in cooking school, we had to roast a bunch of different meats. We then used the drippings and bits from the common pan with hand chopped vitellone to make rag-- the one sauce in clbuttical Italian cookery that is not found in French. It's considered a brown sauce. I wouldn't do that at home.
The rule of thumb with tomatoes here in Italy is "less than 10 minutes or more than two hours. The acid lives between."
For the OP, chop those veg for the battuto-sofritto much finer and make sure they are soft before adding anything else.
