No. 867

Cromesquis of Beef Palates

Cromesquis de Palais de Boeuf

Prepare and cook a beef palate as explained in No. 1326; put it under a weight. Cut it in lozenge-shaped pieces, two inches by three inches; heat these in a half-glaze (No. 400), set them under a weight, lay on each side a slice a slice of foies-gras (goose livers) and cover this with raw chicken forcemeat (No. 89). Roll them in grated bread-crumbs, dip in beaten eggs, roll again in the bread-crumbs and fry until a good light color. Serve on a folded napkin, with a bunch of parsley on top.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a larder already full of half-glaze, cooked palates and forcemeat on hand; assembled from scratch this is a two-day dish. The pieces are essentially a layered croquette, and everything depends on the palate being cooked to complete tenderness before it is ever cut.

Beef palateThe hard palate from the roof of an ox's mouth, sold by some halal and Latin American butchers as paladar or by special order. It must be scalded, the tough grey outer skin scraped away, then simmered several hours in seasoned stock until it will yield to a fingernail; underdone it is rubbery and no later step will fix it.
Pressing"Put it under a weight" means the cooked palate is set flat under a weight until cold and firm; the recipe gives no time, weight or method. It is what makes it possible to cut clean two-by-three-inch lozenges rather than curling scraps. Note that Ranhofer presses twice: again after heating in the half-glaze.
Half-glazeNo. 400 is a reduced brown sauce (demi-glace). A good reduced veal or beef stock, thickened only by reduction, does the same work here: it seasons and glazes the palate rather than saucing it.
ForcemeatNo. 89 is Ranhofer's raw chicken forcemeat; its exact composition is given elsewhere in the book, not here. It must be stiff enough to hold on the sides of the lozenge; if it slumps, it is too warm or too wet, and it will burst the crumb coat in the fat.
Cooking the forcemeat throughThe frying is meant to colour and set. Because the coating encloses raw chicken mousseline, fry at 340-350F until light gold, then finish in a 375F oven until the centre reaches 165F. Frying hotter simply browns the crumbs before the interior sets.
BreadingCrumb, egg, crumb, as written, is deliberate: the first dry layer gives the egg something to grip on a moist surface. Chill the finished pieces at least half an hour before frying so the coat sets.
Foie grasRanhofer's "foies-gras" here is most likely a prepared, firm foie gras rather than raw liver, though the page does not say. Its production or sale is restricted in some jurisdictions; a good chicken-liver parfait, well chilled and firm, behaves the same way between the palate and the forcemeat.
Yield and serviceFigure two pieces per person as a hot side dish; how many two-by-three-inch lozenges a single pressed palate yields depends on its size. The folded napkin and bunch of parsley are period presentation; a rack and a plain plate lose nothing.

A Little History

Cromesquis is the French spelling of kromeski, a fried croquette generally traced to Polish and Russian cookery and absorbed into the nineteenth-century French repertoire, where it was usually a filling wrapped in something — calf's udder, bacon, a pancake — then battered or crumbed and fried. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that kitchen, and its hot side dishes are full of organ and offal cuts that a large restaurant bought cheaply and made expensive through labour. Beef palate is a good example: a nearly worthless piece of the head, transformed by hours of simmering, pressing, glazing and a slice of foie gras into a course fit for the Delmonico's card. Palates appear all through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English and French cookery — Hannah Glasse fricasseed them — and their disappearance from menus has less to do with taste than with the collapse of kitchens willing to spend a day on them.