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Ox Palates, Curried

A dish of boiled ox palates simmered in a curry gravy with onions, apple, and spices, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox Palates, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the palates

  1. Soak the ox palates.

  2. Boil them until tender.

  3. Press them between dishes and let cool.

  4. Cut them into 1½-inch squares.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Combine sliced onions, apple, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and steam until tender without browning.

  3. Mix curry powder with gravy until smooth. Pour the mixture into the saucepan.

  4. Add vinegar, brandy, sugar, salt, pepper, and sliced palates.

  5. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the palates and strain the gravy.

  7. Mix ground rice with mushroom ketchup until smooth. Thicken the gravy with this mixture.

  8. Return the palates and boil gently for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the palates on a hot dish with boiled rice around them.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 through long boiling and simmering.
Onions
Break down while steaming in butter, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the curry flavour while the onions steam.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its spiced, aromatic flavour.
Ground rice
Thickens the gravy so it coats the palates.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base that the curry powder is stirred into and simmered with the palates.

The step that matters

Steaming the onions without browning. Browned onions turn the sauce bitter and dark, and cover-steaming softens them gently in butter so they melt into a smooth base.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, butter, vinegar, brandy, sugar, pepper, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, vinegar, brandy, sugar, pepper, rice. 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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