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Ox-palates a LA Florentine

A stew of ox palates simmered with vegetables, spices, and stock, served with macaroni and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 salt for several hours, handling them frequently to remove mucus.

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

Cook and press

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

  2. Boil gently for about four hours until tender.

  3. Press the palates between two dishes until cold.

Glaze and serve

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

  2. Put the pieces in a stewpan with some of the reduced stock to glaze.

  3. Make T'olpetti with the trimmings and any other convenient meat.

  4. Crumb and fry the T'olpetti.

  5. Serve the T'olpetti alternately with the palates.

  6. Place macaroni in the center and pour brown sauce around.

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 main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering.
Macaroni
Serves as a starchy base in the centre of the dish, holding its shape against the sauce.
Italian brown sauce
Adds savoury richness and moisture around the palates and macaroni.
Additional meat
Provides the meat for the T'olpetti, bound and fried to add a crisp, browned texture.

The step that matters

Boil gently for about four hours until tender. A rolling boil toughens and breaks up the connective tissue surface unevenly; a gentle simmer lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin, giving tender, intact palates.

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.

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