Palates
Those of the ox are alone worthy of trouble. They are to be blanched for ten minutes, cooled, drained, carefully scraped, and divided in two lengthways. They are then to be simmered for three hours, with, say half a pint of broth for each palate, half an ounce of butter, fat or dripping, together with a faggot of sweet-herbs, an onion, a carrot, a clove, and some salt. When they are ready drain them on a cloth, remove fat, and serve them with a Poulette sauce.
A straightforward braise of a cut that has all but disappeared from retail butchery. The technique is sound; the difficulty is sourcing and the scraping step.
- The hinge: scrape while warmThe hinge: scrape early -- The blanch loosens the tough white outer skin of the palate. Scrape it off as soon as the palate is cool enough to handle; left until fully cold, the skin is generally reckoned harder to lift, and simmering will not remove it.
- SourcingOx palate is the hard roof of a cow's mouth and is now a special-order item at best. Under EU and UK BSE rules the skull of older cattle is classed as specified risk material and the recovery of head meat is tightly controlled, which is why what does surface tends to come from young animals via a halal or specialist butcher.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ cups, per palate. The palates should be barely covered; top up with hot broth if the three hours reduce it too far.
- Faggot of sweet-herbsA bouquet garni — parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string, or bundled in a leek leaf. Remove before serving.
- Simmer, do not boilThree hours at a bare tremble is right for this cut; it goes from rubbery to yielding and slightly gelatinous only at the end. A rolling boil shreds the palate and clouds the liquid without making it tender any faster.
- Poulette sauceA velouté made from the strained cooking liquor, finished off the heat with egg yolk and cream, lemon juice and chopped parsley. Once the yolk goes in, keep it below a simmer or it will curdle.
- ServingSlice the palate on the diagonal into strips or lozenges before saucing. In Kettner's period a dish of this kind belonged among the entrées rather than as a main course.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877), written by the journalist E. S. Dallas around the name of the London restaurateur Auguste Kettner, is a dictionary of dishes for a readership that still expected to see offal on a menu. Ox palate was a standard entrée ingredient in English and French cookery from the eighteenth century well into the nineteenth: cheap, gelatinous when properly cooked, and valued less for flavour than for texture, which is why it turns up so often in ragoûts, vol-au-vent fillings and the elaborate mock dishes of the period. Dallas opens by remarking that only the ox's palate repays the labour, though he gives no reason for it. The cut fell out of use in the twentieth century as offal cookery contracted, and BSE-era controls on cattle head meat further restricted its use in Britain.