No. 836

Attereaux of Beef Palate

Attereaux de Palais de Boeuf

Obtain some round tin cases, two and one-quarter inches deep, the bottom being one and three-eighths inches in diameter, while the top is an inch and five-eighths; the bottom must be perforated with a hole so as to allow the skewer to pass through and fasten on to a piece of bread. Cut some rounds of well pressed beef palate, one inch and a quarter in diameter by three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness; have as many pieces of truffles and mushrooms, both of them an eighth of an inch thick, and seven-eighths of an inch in diameter. Reduce an allemande sauce (No. 407), with some jelly. Run on to small silver skewers, first a piece of palate, then alternate with a piece of mushroom, then another round of palate and truffle; set each skewer into a round case, and fill them up with the partly cold prepared sauce; when cold, unmold by dipping in hot water, dip in beaten eggs, then roll them in bread-crumbs, and fry to a fine color; serve on folded napkins.

← No. 835 Anchovy Fritters Hot Side Dishes No. 837 Attereaux of Chicken a la d'Antin →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's attereaux are skewered morsels set in a stiff sauce, breaded and fried — croquette technique on a stick. The whole thing stands or falls on the sauce setting hard enough to hold its shape in hot fat.

Beef palateThe roof of an ox's mouth. It must be blanched, the tough outer skin scraped or peeled away, then simmered for several hours until tender and pressed flat under a weight before slicing. It is not a supermarket item; ask a halal, Latin American or Chinese butcher, or substitute poached sweetbread or firm cooked chicken breast cut to the same rounds.
Allemande sauceNo. 407. Allemande is classically a velouté finished with an egg-yolk liaison, usually with mushroom essence and lemon — not a modern brown sauce. Any thick velouté with yolks will do the same job here.
"Reduce with some jelly"The jelly is aspic or a strong reduced veal stock. This is the hinge: the sauce has to set to the firmness of cold, sliceable custard, or the attereaux will slump the moment they hit the fryer. Reduce hard, chill a test spoonful, and only proceed when it holds a clean cut.
The tin casesRoughly 2¼ in deep, 1⅜ in at the base and 1⅝ in at the top — a small dariole or 2 oz timbale mold is the closest modern equivalent. The pierced bottom lets the skewer pass through and fasten into a piece of bread beneath, holding it steady while the sauce sets; a solid mold works if you stand the skewer upright in the sauce and support it until firm.
Silver skewersDecorative hâtelets are museum pieces now. Short bamboo or metal cocktail skewers serve, trimmed so they sit level in the mold; wooden ones will scorch slightly in the fryer but hold fine.
UnmoldingDip the mold in hot water for only a few seconds. Longer and the outer layer of sauce melts and the cylinder slumps.
FryingDeep fat at 350–375F, one to two minutes, only to color. Every component is already cooked; the point is a crisp shell while the interior stays barely warm and creamy.
Chill before breadingBread the unmolded cylinders straight from the refrigerator and return them to the cold for at least half an hour before frying. A double coat of egg and crumb is worth the trouble here — a single breach and the sauce escapes.
Yield and serviceThe original gives none. Figure two per person as a hot side dish, served upright on a folded napkin so the fat drains and the skewers stay vertical.

A Little History

Attereau is a French kitchen word for food threaded on a small skewer, related to the older hâtelet and hâtereau, and by the nineteenth century it named a specific preparation: cooked morsels alternated on a skewer, masked in a thick reduced sauce, breaded and fried. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, gave a long run of them in The Epicurean (1894) — a chicken version among them — and the beef palate version is characteristic of a period that wasted nothing and made luxury out of the parts other people discarded. Palate was standard high-kitchen offal in France and England, valued for a gelatinous firmness that slices cleanly and holds a stamped round; it appears in Carême and Ude as well. Its disappearance from menus has less to do with taste than with butchery: the head is now rarely broken down in ways that make the palate available at retail. The exacting fractions of an inch in the mold dimensions are pure Ranhofer.