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Beef-Palates

A preserved beef palate dish simmered with spices, then pickled in wine and vinegar.

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

Beef-Palates

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the palates

  1. Clean the beef palates.

  2. Simmer them in 1 quart of water, skimming well.

  3. Add mace, cloves, pepper, and sweet herbs; boil until tender, about 5 hours.

  4. Remove the skin and cut into small pieces.

  5. Let the pieces cool covered.

Pickle and store

  1. Make a pickle with equal parts white wine and vinegar, the spices, and salt.

  2. When cold, strain the pickle.

  3. Pour the pickle over the palates with fresh spice and bay leaves.

  4. Cover tightly.

  5. 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
Provide the meat that is cooked until tender and then pickled.
White wine and vinegar
Provide the acidity of the pickle that preserves and flavours the meat.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle aromatic flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Beef palates need a long, gentle simmer to soften the connective tissue. Stopping early leaves the meat tough, and boiling hard can toughen and break the pieces, so keep the liquid at a steady simmer.

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.

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