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Ox Palates, with Macaroni
Skin and boil three palates as before directed. Press them between two dishes, and when cold cut the best part into slices two inches long and half an inch wide. Put them into a stewpan, cover them with nicely-seasoned gravy, add a glassful of sherry, and simmer very gently for half an hour. Pile half a pound of hot macaroni in the middle of a dish, arrange the sliced palates round it, and send to table in a tureen the gravy in which they were stewed. Time, four hours to boil the palates. Sufficient for four persons. OX, SECTIONAL DIAGRAM OF THE. (See illustration in connection with the article on BEEF.)
A Victorian made dish built on a cut almost no modern shop stocks. Everything hinges on getting the palates properly tender and skinned before they ever meet the sherry gravy.
- Sourcing the palatesOx palate is the roof of a cow's mouth, sold in some halal, Caribbean and West African butchers and by whole-animal suppliers, usually to order. Three palates yields a modest quantity of trimmed meat once the skin and gristle are off -- enough, as the recipe says, for four.
- "As before directed"Cassell's assumes you have read the preceding entry on boiling palates, which is not reprinted here. The usual period method was to soak them well and boil them until the thick outer skin lifts, peeling it away while the palates are still hot, since it sets hard as they cool; if they are not yet tender they go back in the pot.
- The four hours is a minimumPalate is largely connective tissue and will be leathery until it turns gelatinous. Four hours at a bare simmer is the low end and it may want longer; a pressure cooker will shorten it considerably.
- Pressing between two dishesThis flattens the cooked palates so they can be cut into even slices. Weight the top dish with a couple of tins and chill until firm; slicing is far easier cold than warm.
- "Nicely-seasoned gravy"In this period the word usually means a stock-based brown sauce rather than pan drippings, often lightly thickened. A well-reduced, well-seasoned beef stock gives much the same effect.
- A glassful of sherryA Victorian wine glass is about 2 to 2.5 fl oz, so roughly a quarter cup. Use a dry sherry such as fino or amontillado; cream sherry will make the gravy cloying.
- MacaroniIn Victorian Britain macaroni meant long hollow tubes, often broken into lengths, and period recipes generally boiled it far longer than we would, to a soft finish. Half a pound dry is about 225 g, which is generous for four alongside the meat; cook it to your own preference rather than theirs.
- ServingThe gravy goes to table separately in a tureen, as the recipe directs, rather than poured over. Sufficient for four, as a course in a longer meal rather than as a modern main plate.
- A dictionary artifactThe line about the sectional diagram of the ox is the start of the next alphabetical entry, not part of the recipe.
Ox palate had a long run in European high cookery before it disappeared almost entirely from English-speaking kitchens in the twentieth century. Prized for its texture rather than its flavour, it turns silky and faintly gelatinous after hours of gentle boiling, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cooks used it much as they used cockscombs and sweetbreads: as a delicate garnish for ragouts, vol-au-vents and patties, or as here, ranged around a mound of something starchy. Its appearance in Cassell's alongside instructions for tongue, cheek, tripe and tail reflects a household economy in which a butcher sold every part of the animal and a competent cook was expected to know what to do with all of it. Macaroni, by this date widely available in Britain, appeared in English cookery books both sweetened as a pudding and dressed with cheese and rich gravy in the Anglo-Italian manner.