No. 1327

Beef Palates Baked, Chevreuse

Palais de Boeuf au Gratin a la Chevreuse

Prepare and cook the palates the same as for a la bechamel (No. 1326); put under a weight, when cold cut them into squares four by two and one-half inches. Cover each piece with a layer of quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and fine herbs (No. 385), roll them up, and arrange them in buttered tin rings two and one-half inches high by one and three-quarters inches in diameter. Put them in a sautoir moistened with veal blond (No. 423). Set them in a slow oven for twenty minutes, unmold and dress crown-shaped on a dish; cover with a quenelle forcemeat (No. 90), leaving an opening in the center, smooth the surface with a knife, pour over some melted butter, and sprinkle grated parmesan cheese on top. Put this into a slow oven to brown well, and just when sending it to the table pour into the center a garnishing a la Chevreuse (No. 655).

← No. 1326 Beef Palates a la Bechamel Beef No. 1328 Beef Palates in Tortue →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cross-referenced dish from Ranhofer's Epicurean: almost none of the work is on this page, and the palates themselves are the obstacle. Read it as an assembly diagram that assumes four or five other preparations are already standing by.

Sourcing the palatesBeef palate is the hard upper roof of the mouth, sold by a few halal, Latin American and Chinese butchers and almost nowhere else; expect to order it. It is not interchangeable with tongue.
The step the recipe hides"Prepare and cook the palates" points back to No. 1326 and covers the whole job: scalding, scraping off the thick outer skin while hot, then a long simmer in seasoned stock -- several hours -- until a knife goes through easily. Undercooked palate stays cartilaginous, and nothing later in the recipe rescues it.
Pressing"Put under a weight" is a real instruction, not a flourish. The cooked palates are cooled flat under a board and a few pounds so they can be cut into clean 4 x 2½ inch rectangles that will roll without splitting.
Slow ovenRanhofer specifies only a "slow oven" for both bakings and gives no temperature. The first is a gentle set for the forcemeat, twenty minutes; the second is only to colour the cheese and butter, so watch it rather than timing it.
Quenelle forcemeatNos. 89 and 90 are pounded quenelle forcemeats of the usual nineteenth-century type, meat pounded with a binder and lightened; the page itself does not give the composition. A modern food processor does the pounding, but the mixture must stay cold throughout or it will break and the rolls weep in the oven.
Veal blond and fines herbesVeal blond (No. 423) is a pale veal stock, lightly coloured, not a brown one; a good unsalted veal or light chicken stock stands in. "Fine herbs" (No. 385) is a separate preparation in the book rather than dried herbs from a jar; the page does not spell out what goes into it.
VesselsA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan. The "buttered tin rings, two and one-half inches high by one and three-quarters in diameter" are what we would call ring moulds or small dariole rings; buttered ramekins of similar dimensions work, though unmoulding is fussier.
The Chevreuse garnishNo. 655 is a separate garnish, made elsewhere in the book, poured into the well of the crown at the last second. It needs to be hot and thick enough to sit in the opening rather than slump out through the forcemeat wall.
YieldRanhofer gives none, and the count depends entirely on how many four by two-and-a-half-inch rectangles the palates yield. Treat it as a first course within a longer menu.

A Little History

Beef palate was standard grand-cuisine material well into the nineteenth century, valued precisely because it was gelatinous, bland and took whatever flavour it was given -- the same logic that made calf's ear, cockscomb and lamb's sweetbread staples of the garnish repertoire. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system rather than a book to cook from casually, which is why this entry is little more than a chain of numbers pointing elsewhere in the volume. Garnish names of this kind, Chevreuse among them, were generally attached to French places and noble houses by nineteenth-century chefs and are traditional rather than documented inventions; the name tells you the composition was considered fine, not who first served it. What the dish really records is a kitchen brigade large enough that someone could spend a morning scraping palates while someone else pounded forcemeat -- a division of labour that vanished with the sort of restaurant Delmonico's was.