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To Ragout Ox Palates

A stew of ox palates simmered in a sauce of gravy soup, butter, flour, onion, lemon, wine, nutmeg, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

To Ragout Ox Palates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the palates

  1. Wash the ox palates clean and place them in cold water.

  2. Boil slowly until tender.

  3. Remove the black skin.

  4. Cut into neat pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and let it brown.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a little while.

  3. Pour in the gravy soup.

  4. Add the onion, lemon juice, white wine, nutmeg and mushroom ketchup.

  5. Let it boil for ten minutes.

  6. Strain the sauce back into the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the palates and let them stew in the sauce until rich.

  2. Dish it up and garnish with lemon.

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. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 body of the ragout, becoming tender and gelatinous after slow boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and, once browned, a nutty flavour to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly with the butter to form a roux.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the gravy and palates.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the butter brown. Browning the butter builds nutty flavour, but it can scorch quickly and turn bitter, so it needs close attention before the flour goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, white wine, nutmeg, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, white wine, nutmeg, mushroom, ketchup. 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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