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Meat Jelly

A chilled beef stock set with gelatin, flavored with pepper, cloves, sherry, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Meat Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the beef into pieces.

  2. Place the beef pieces in a pot with the cold water.

  3. Add the peppercorns, cloves, and salt.

  4. Let the mixture simmer slowly for 4 hours.

  5. Add the soaked gelatine.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Stir in the sherry and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  3. Refrigerate until cold and set.

  4. Slice to serve.

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Releases flavour and natural gelatin into the broth as it simmers.
Gelatine
Sets the strained liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly when chilled.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a mellow sweetness to the clear broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich broth.

The step that matters

Add the soaked gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved into the hot liquid before setting. Undissolved granules leave gritty spots, and adding it to a boiling liquid can weaken its setting power, so the aspic may not firm properly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, sherry):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, sherry. 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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