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Bouchees of Beef Palates
Chop up two cold cooked beef palates into very small pieces and put them into a saucepan with one-third of their bulk of chopped cooked mushrooms; pour a few tablespoonfuls of very good bechamel sauce into another saucepan, reduce it, stirring continually, and adding gradually one-half teacupful of melted glaze. Add it to the salpicon of palates and mushrooms, and put the saucepan containing them into the bain-marie to keep hot. Have ready some bouchees cases, made of puff paste, remove the top, put in some of the mixture, cover them over, arrange on a napkin spread on a dish and serve. Bouchees, Queen Style Roll some good puff paste into a quarter of an inch in thickness, and let it remain in a cold place for ten minutes, then cut six rounds out of the paste with a three-inch cutter, fluted; lay these on a buttered tin baking-dish, slightly separated from each other, and brush them over with beaten egg; make a mark on the surface of each with a paste cutter two inches in diameter, being careful to dip the cutter each time in hot water, so that the marked line may remain perfect; then place in a brisk oven for twenty minutes; lift the centers with a knife, remove the crumb and fill with a white salpicon, made of truffles, mushrooms and finely shredded chicken and tongue cut up into small dice. Set the centers on again as covers, and serve on a hot dish with a folded napkin on it.
Two related recipes run together here: a filling of chopped beef palate in reduced béchamel, and the puff-paste cases to hold it. The obstacle is not technique but the palates themselves.
- Beef palatesThe roof of the ox's mouth, sold by butchers who handle whole heads and now essentially absent from retail counters. Oscar assumes they arrive already "cold cooked" — in a professional kitchen they were blanched, scraped free of the tough outer skin, then simmered three to four hours in stock until gelatinous. Ordering them means asking a halal or Latin American butcher in advance; ox tongue or well-braised cheek gives the same soft, faintly gelatinous body if you cannot get palate.
- GlazeGlace de viande: brown stock reduced until it sets to a syrup and coats a spoon heavily. A teacupful in this period is usually reckoned at about 4 fl oz, so half a teacupful is roughly 2 fl oz — still a great deal of glaze; add it gradually and taste, since modern commercial glace and stock concentrates are far saltier than a kitchen-made reduction.
- SalpiconNot a sauce but a mixture of ingredients cut into small even dice, bound with just enough sauce to hold. The binding should be thick enough to sit in the case without running when the top is lifted; if it slumps, reduce further rather than adding flour.
- Bain-marieHere it means a pan of the filling standing in hot water to hold at serving temperature without scorching or breaking the sauce. A low oven or a double boiler does the same.
- "Brisk oven"425–450°F for the bouchées. Puff paste needs that heat to throw steam and lift; a moderate oven gives flat, greasy cases. Twenty minutes is right for three-inch rounds a quarter-inch thick.
- Marking the lidsThe inner two-inch cut goes only part way through, scoring a lid that can be lifted after baking. The recipe's reason for dipping the cutter in hot water is that the marked line stays clean; a cold cutter is likelier to drag the layers.
- ChillingTen minutes in a cold place is the minimum. Rolled puff paste that has relaxed and firmed cuts cleanly and rises straight; warm paste distorts and leans.
- YieldThe Queen Style version specifies six three-inch cases — a first course for three, or six pieces on a passed tray. No yield can be worked out for the palate filling: the original gives no measure beyond two palates, a third their bulk of mushrooms and "a few tablespoonfuls" of béchamel.
Bouchée means "mouthful," and the little puff-paste case — a vol-au-vent shrunk to a single bite or two — was standard equipment in the late nineteenth-century hotel kitchen, filled with whatever rich salpicon the larder produced. Beef palate belongs to the same economy: cheap offal became garnish for entrées and the substance of croquettes, pies and ragouts. Palate was prized less for flavor than for texture, the same soft gelatinous quality that made calf's foot and ox tongue useful, and it appears in Careme, Gouffé and Escoffier alike before largely dropping out of English-language cookbooks by the mid-twentieth century. That the two recipes are printed together is telling: the case is the constant, and the filling is whatever the kitchen has, dressed with béchamel and meat glaze until it tastes expensive.