No. 1540

Veal Palates, Epicurean Style

Palais de Veau a l'Epicurienne

Fry one coffesspoonful of finely chopped blanched shallots in very hot butter; add to it a few mushroom heads and braised lamb's noisettes free from fat; fry together for a minute, seasoning with salt and prepared red pepper (No. 168). Moisten with cream and a little bechamel (No. 409) then lay in the veal palates prepared as for a la Sevigne (No. 1539) and cut round-shape an inch and a quarter in diameter and let simmer for five minutes; finish with a little butter and serve very hot.

← No. 1539 Veal Palates a la Sevigne Veal No. 1541 Quarter of Veal, Scotch Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A short finishing preparation that assumes you have already done the long work elsewhere: the palates are cooked and trimmed under No. 1539, and this entry only sauces and reheats them. Read it as the last five minutes of a much longer job.

Veal palatesThe hard palate from the roof of a calf's mouth, sold today only by specialist offal butchers and usually to order. They must be scalded, the horny skin peeled away, then simmered for hours in a blanc until gelatinous and tender before they can be cut into the inch-and-a-quarter rounds this recipe calls for.
CoffeespoonfulUsually reckoned smaller than a teaspoon, perhaps half, though the term is not fixed and French usage (cuillerée à café) equates it with a teaspoon. Either way the amount of shallot is small; they are a seasoning here, not a base.
The cross-referencesNo. 168 is Ranhofer's prepared red pepper; plain cayenne, used sparingly, stands in. No. 409 is his béchamel. Only 'a little' béchamel is called for, so the sauce is a light coating one rather than thick.
Lamb's noisettesSmall boneless rounds cut from the loin or trimmed rack, already braised and cooled here, and stripped of fat so they do not grease the cream. They are a garnish in the dish, not the main element.
Mushroom headsCaps only, stems discarded. Small button caps left whole are closest to what is meant; Ranhofer elsewhere often calls for mushrooms turned or channelled, but this entry says nothing of the sort.
Five minutes and no moreEverything in the pan is already cooked. The simmer is to marry the sauce and heat the palates through; longer and the cream tightens while the palates begin to shed gelatine and turn gluey.
Finishing with butterThe hinge of the dish. Swirl in cold butter off the heat or at the barest tremble, never at a boil, or the sauce breaks and the gloss is lost. This is also why it must go to the table immediately.
YieldNo quantity is given for the palates themselves, and no number of servings; the entry sits among the veal entrées. Any figure per person is guesswork.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised the way a professional kitchen thinks: a base preparation is written once and then cross-referenced endlessly, which is why this entry is three sentences long and points at two other numbers. Veal palates belong to a category of gelatinous offal — palates, ears, calf's head, cockscombs — that classical French cooking prized for exactly the quality modern cooks avoid, a soft yielding texture that carries sauce. They appear all through nineteenth-century restaurant menus and had become rare on American ones by the early twentieth century. The neighbouring recipe, à la Sévigné, is one of many dishes traditionally said to be named for the seventeenth-century letter-writer, though the attribution is not documented.