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To Rag Oo Ox Palates

A stew of ox palates simmered with gravy, shallots, wine, bacon, lemon, mushrooms, and force‑meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Rag Oo Ox Palates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the palates

  1. Clean and boil the ox palates until tender.

  2. Skin and cut the palates into square and long pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, melt butter and stir in flour until light brown.

  2. Add gravy, shallots, wine, bacon ham, and lemon; boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce into a stew pan with palates, force-meat balls, and mushrooms.

  4. Season with pepper and salt; toss for 5-6 minutes.

  5. Dish and garnish with beetroot or lemon.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ox palates
Form the tender, gelatinous body of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Lisbon wine
Adds acidity and depth that brightens the rich sauce.
Fresh mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and a soft, meaty texture.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for 20 minutes after adding the gravy. A rapid boil reduces and thickens the liquid while cooking off raw wine and lemon sharpness, so the sauce ends up balanced rather than thin or harsh.

“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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