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Slew Ox Palates

A stew of ox palates simmered with veal gravy, Madeira wine, ketchup, browning sauce, onion, lemon, artichoke bottoms, forcemeat balls, and barberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Slew Ox Palates

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the palates

  1. Wash the ox palates in several waters.

  2. Soak them in warm water for 30 minutes.

  3. Wash them again and place them in a pot.

  4. Cover with water and tie down with strong paper.

  5. Cook in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until tender, or boil until tender.

  6. Skin and cut the palates into pieces ½ inch wide and 3 inches long.

Make the stew

  1. In a pan, combine the palates with veal gravy, Madeira wine, ketchup, browning sauce, onion, and lemon.

  2. Stew for 30 minutes, then remove the onion and lemon.

  3. Thicken the sauce and place the palates in a dish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Add boiled artichoke bottoms cut into quarters and forcemeat balls on top.

  2. Garnish with barberries and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + artichoketop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Clove + artichoketop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together175 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + artichoketop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox palates
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender after long cooking and gelatinises into the sauce.
Veal gravy
Forms the savoury base of the sauce, adding body and meaty flavour.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Browning sauce
Adds colour and a deeper, caramelised savoury flavour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Contributes acidity and sweetness that rounds out the sauce flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the palates until fully tender. Palates are rich in collagen that only softens into gelatin with long, gentle cooking. Stopping early leaves them tough and chewy, so test for tenderness before moving on to the stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, madeira wine, ketchup, sauce, clove, lemon, artichoke):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, madeira wine, ketchup, sauce, clove, lemon, artichoke. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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