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Beef Palate Croquettes
Put three palates into a saucepan of water and boil over a moderate fire until done. Take them out, scrape and cut them into quarters. Put them into another saucepan with two heads of cloves, a clove of garlic, a little thyme and bay-leaves, salt and pepper to taste, and sufficient stock to cover, and cook slowly for half an hour; then take out the palates, put a teaspoonful of beef forcemeat on each quarter, roll them up, and dip into a thin paste made of flour, one tablespoonful of olive oil and one half pint of white wine. Plunge them into a fryingpan of boiling fat, fry until done, arrange them on a dish with a garnish of fried parsley, and serve very hot or they will be spoiled.
A nineteenth-century restaurant preparation of beef palate — the hard palate from the roof of a steer's mouth, sold as offal and now a special order from a whole-animal butcher. Most of the work is in the initial cooking and the peeling; the rest goes quickly.
- SourcingBeef palate is rarely stocked but can usually be ordered from a halal or Latin American butcher, sometimes as paladar. Three palates is a generous main course for four; each yields four rolled quarters, so twelve croquettes.
- "Boil until done" means hoursPalate is dense connective tissue. Simmering, not a hard boil, for two and a half to three hours brings it to the point where the rough outer skin lifts; a pressure cooker does it in about forty-five minutes. Undercooked palate is inedibly rubbery, and this is the step the recipe most badly underspecifies.
- Scrape while hotThe grey-white outer membrane peels away only while the palate is still steaming. Let it cool and it welds back on. Work with a towel and a paring knife, and drop the pieces back into hot liquid if they stiffen.
- "Two heads of cloves"Two whole cloves, the spice — not garlic heads, which are named separately in the next phrase. Two is right; palate takes on clove flavour readily.
- Beef forcemeatA period forcemeat is lean beef pounded or ground fine with an equal bulk of suet or fat, bound with a little soaked breadcrumb and egg, and seasoned. A teaspoon per quarter is all that will stay put once rolled; secure each roll with a toothpick before battering.
- The batterAs written the coating is flour, a tablespoon of oil and half a pint of white wine — a thin crepe-like batter with no leavening and no egg. Add flour until it coats the back of a spoon without running off, or the wine will simply wash away in the fat.
- Frying"Boiling fat" means 350–375°F. The filling is raw, so give the rolls three to four minutes and check that the centre has reached 160°F before serving the batch.
- Fried parsleyParsley must be bone dry before it goes into hot fat, and it needs only ten to fifteen seconds — it crisps and turns bright, then burns almost immediately after.
- Serve immediatelyThe instruction to serve very hot is not decorative. The batter softens within minutes and the gelatinous palate stiffens as it cools.
Beef palate was a standard item of the old restaurant kitchen, part of the broad category the French called abats and English cooks called offal, and it appears in the French classical repertoire alongside tongue, ear and muzzle. Its appeal was textural rather than savoury: cooked long enough, palate turns gelatinous and faintly springy, taking on whatever braising liquid it is given, which is why the recipe leans so hard on clove, garlic, thyme and bay. Oscar Tschirky's book, compiled from the Waldorf's kitchens around the turn of the twentieth century, includes croquettes of this kind — cut, stuffed, rolled, battered and fried — a way of turning a cheap cut into something a dining room would accept. The dish has largely vanished from American menus, though palate survives in Mexican cooking.