Skip to main content
Main

To Pickle Beef Palates

Pickled beef palates simmered, cut, and preserved in a wine and vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pickle Beef Palates

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the palates

  1. Clean the palates and simmer them in water for 5 hours until tender.

  2. Remove the skin from the palates.

  3. Cut the palates into small pieces.

Make the pickle

  1. Make a pickle brine with white wine, vinegar, spices, and salt.

  2. Let the pickle brine cool to cold.

  3. Strain the pickle brine.

  4. Pour the cold pickle brine over the palates with fresh spices and bay leaves.

  5. Cover tightly and store for use.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 dish, becoming tender when simmered and then firm once pickled.
White wine and vinegar
Provide the acidity that flavours and preserves the palates in the pickle brine.
Salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw flavour into the meat.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle aromatic, herbal note to the pickled palates.

The step that matters

Let the pickle brine cool to cold before pouring it over the palates. Pouring hot brine over cooked meat can soften its texture and partly cook it further, so the brine should be fully cooled before it is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, pepper, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, pepper, white wine, vinegar. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes