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Ox Palates
Ox palates may be served in three or four different ways, but they always require the same preparation. They deserve to be better known than they are, as they are both inexpensive and wholesome. Three or four are enough for a dish. To prepare them, dissolve a handful of salt in a gallon of lukewarm water, put in the palates, let them lie for several hours, and press them frequently with the fingers to draw out the mucus. Drain them, and put them in a saucepan of cold water over a gentle fire. Let them heat gradually, and before the water boils lift them out and scrape off the horny skin which covers the roof-part, until they look white and clear. If the water boils, the skin will be difficult to peel off.
This is a preparation, not a finished dish: everything Cassell's promises comes after the palates are cleaned. Two things matter — keeping the water below a boil, and understanding that the peeled palates still need hours of gentle cooking.
- Never let it boilThe whole method hinges on lifting the palates out before the water comes to a boil; Cassell's gives no temperature, only the instruction to heat gradually and lift them before boiling point. Once the water has boiled, the horny outer skin, in the book's words, will be difficult to peel off.
- What an ox palate isThe hard palate — the roof of the mouth — of a bovine, sold as offal. It is largely collagen, which is why it turns silky rather than tender-crumbly with long cooking.
- Sourcing todayNot a supermarket item. A halal or Latin American butcher is the likeliest source (Spanish paladar de res, Italian palato di manzo). Bovine head tissues are regulated in the UK and EU under BSE rules, so what is legally sold varies by country and by the animal's age; buy only from a licensed butcher.
- The brineA handful of salt in a gallon is roughly 1/4 cup to 4 quarts — a weak brine whose job is to draw out mucus, not to season. The book says only 'several hours'; overnight in the refrigerator is easier and safer than leaving them to stand at room temperature.
- After the scrapingCassell's stops here because the palates then go into whatever dish you intend. They still need long, gentle simmering in stock — commonly reckoned at two to three hours — before they are tender enough to slice.
- YieldCassell's reckons three or four palates enough for one dish; the book does not say how many people that serves, and they shrink considerably in cooking.
Ox palates were a standing item in the English and French kitchen from the seventeenth century onward, turning up in ragouts, pies and fricassees, and much valued for the gelatinous body they gave a sauce. Cassell's line that they "deserve to be better known" is telling: by the 1870s and 1880s, when the Dictionary of Cookery was compiled, the more obscure offal cuts were already sliding out of middle-class English cooking even as French chefs kept them on as palais de bœuf. The book's whole treatment reflects a Victorian household economy in which nothing off the carcass was wasted and the cheapest parts, given enough time and fuel, could be made to look like an entrée. Ox palate never returned to British kitchens, though head and offal cuts of this kind are still eaten in parts of Latin America and Asia.