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Beef Palates

Beef palates are seasoned, browned, and simmered in a mixture of beef and mutton gravy with anchovy, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Palates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tenderize the beef palates, then blanch and scrape them.

  2. Rub the palates with a mixture of mace, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and crumb of bread.

Fry and braise

  1. Heat butter in a stewpan and fry the palates until brown on both sides.

  2. Pour off the excess fat.

  3. Add equal parts beef and mutton gravy to the stewpan.

  4. Incorporate an anchovy, a little lemon juice, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Roll a piece of butter in flour and add it to the mixture.

  6. Simmer for 15 minutes, then serve garnished with lemon slices.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef palates
The main protein, which is tenderized and browned to give a rich, savoury base.
Butter
Fat for browning the palates and, rolled in flour, thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Rolled into the butter, it thickens the gravy so the sauce becomes smooth and cohesive.
Beef gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding meaty flavour and body as it simmers.
Mutton gravy
Adds further depth of meat flavour to the sauce alongside the beef gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the palates in butter. Frying until deeply brown on both sides triggers the Maillard reaction, building the savoury flavour that the later gravy and simmering rely on. Pale palates will taste flat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, nutmeg, clove, pepper, bread, butter, mutton):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, nutmeg, clove, pepper, bread, butter, mutton. 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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