Skip to main content
Main

Ox-palates a LA Florentine

A dish of boiled ox palates served with polpettini, macaroni a la Milanese, and Italian or brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ox-palates a LA Florentine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the palates

  1. Soak the ox palates in water with a good handful of coarse sea salt for several hours, handling them frequently to extract mucus.

  2. Parboil the palates in salted water until the skin is easily scraped off.

Cook and press

  1. Put the cleaned palates in a saucepan with carrot, onion, celery, parsley, cloves, mace, peppercorns, garlic, salt, and water or stock.

  2. Boil gently for about 4 hours until tender, then press between two dishes until cold.

Shape and serve

  1. Cut the best parts of the palates into circular pieces using a tin cutter.

  2. Place the pieces in a saucepan with some of their stock boiled down to a glaze.

  3. Make Polpettini with the trimmings, ham, and any other convenient meat, then fry them.

  4. Serve the palates alternately with the Polpettini, placing macaroni a la Milanese in the center.

  5. Pour Italian or brown sauce around the base of the dish 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ox palates
Provide the tender meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Ham
Adds savoury flavour and richness to the Polpettini.
Stock
Gives moisture and flavour during cooking and, boiled down, a glossy glaze.
Italian or brown sauce
Adds moisture and a rich, savoury finish around the dish.

The step that matters

Boiling gently for about 4 hours. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly into gelatin, making the palates tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and breaks up the pieces, so keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, celery, parsley, clove, garlic, ham):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, celery, parsley, clove, garlic, ham. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes