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Beef Palates

Beef palates simmered, sliced, and stewed in gravy or fricassee with seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Palates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the palates

  1. Simmer the beef palates in water for several hours until they can be peeled.

  2. Cut the palates into slices or leave them whole as desired.

Make the gravy

  1. Stew them in a rich gravy until tender.

  2. If the gravy is clear, add butter and flour.

  3. For a white dish, boil the palates in milk.

  4. For a white dish, stew them in fricassee sauce.

  5. Add cream, butter, flour, mushroom powder, and a little pounded mace.

Season and serve

  1. Season with Cayenne, salt, and catsup before serving.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef palates
Form the main body of the stew and become tender through long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the palates rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the gravy a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Milk
Makes the dish white and adds creaminess to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity that brighten the savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the palates until they can be peeled. Palates need long, gentle simmering to soften the tough outer skin and become tender. Stopping early leaves the skin hard to remove and the meat chewy, so the stew's texture suffers.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter, flour, milk, cream, mushroom):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, flour, milk, cream, mushroom. 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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