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BEEF PALATES (au Gratin)
Beat up the yolks of two eggs, and mix them when well beaten, with the following ingredients:-A blade of mace, pounded, with a little salt and pepper, a shallot, and a spring of parsley, minced, two or three button mushrooms, and a slice of ham, scraped finely. Cut three palates, which have been cleaned and boiled and had the skin removed, into long slices; spread this forcemeat over them, and roll each one round, fastening with a skewer. Bake in a moderate oven for half an hour, with breadcrumbs, well seasoned, and thin slices of butter laid over them. Probable cost, 6d. each.
A Victorian offal dish that depends almost entirely on work the recipe assumes has already been done. The half-hour in the oven only sets the forcemeat and browns the crumbs.
- The hinge: the palates must already be tenderOx palates need long, slow simmering — commonly three to four hours in salted water or stock — before they are soft enough to slice and roll. The half hour in the oven will not tenderise anything, and a palate that is still firm at the rolling stage will be rubbery on the plate.
- Cleaning and skinningAfter the initial boil the rough outer skin is peeled or scraped away while the palate is still hot; it lifts cleanly then and clings stubbornly once cold. What remains is a pale, gelatinous sheet with a texture close to tripe.
- SourcingBeef palates are not a supermarket item. They must be ordered from a butcher who handles whole heads, and in some countries rules on bovine head meat limit what is sold, so availability varies. Tripe is the nearest substitute in texture if palates cannot be had.
- A moderate oven350F / 175C. Thirty minutes is enough to cook the egg-bound forcemeat through and colour the crumbs.
- Blade of maceA blade is one dried piece of the aril around a nutmeg — roughly a quarter teaspoon once pounded. Ground mace from a jar works in the same quantity.
- "A spring of parsley"A printer's slip for a sprig. Read the whole seasoning list as small: this is a forcemeat for three palates, not a stuffing for a bird.
- Scraped hamScraping with a knife rather than chopping gives a fine paste that binds with the egg yolks. A food processor pulse achieves the same thing; do not dice.
- Butter and crumbsThe thin slices of butter laid over the top are what make this au gratin — they melt into the crumbs and brown them. Without a fat covering the crumbs will simply dry out.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; three palates, rolled and sliced, would likely stretch to three or four as a savoury course rather than a main. Remove the skewers before serving.
Beef or ox palate was standard nineteenth-century butcher's economy: the roof of the animal's mouth, cheap, gelatinous, and prized precisely because long cooking turned it silky. It appears throughout eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery — Hannah Glasse gives versions — usually fricasseed, ragoo'd, or, as here, rolled with forcemeat and gratinated. Cassell's habit of quoting a "probable cost" marks it as a book written for households keeping close accounts; sixpence a palate placed this among the affordable made dishes, an offal cut dressed up with ham, mushroom and mace to look like something grander. The taste for palates faded in Britain across the twentieth century as offal generally fell out of favour, and restrictions on bovine head meat following the BSE crisis of the 1980s and 1990s appear to have reduced further what remained of the trade.