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Restorative Meat Jelly

A gelatinous dish made from beef shin, ox foot, and vegetables, cooked slowly to set into a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Restorative Meat Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ox foot

  1. Break the ox foot into several pieces, split it between the toes, and remove all fat and marrow from the bones.

  2. Wash the ox foot thoroughly and blanch it by placing it in cold water and bringing it to a boil.

  3. Place the blanched ox foot in a basin of cold water and scrape it thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces.

  2. In a close-fitting jar, combine the beef, prepared ox foot, cold water, vegetables, and salt.

  3. Place the jar in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or in a saucepan of boiling water to cook for 7 to 9 hours.

Strain and set

  1. Once cooled, slowly open the jar.

  2. Strain the liquid.

  3. Skim the liquid.

  4. Pour the liquid into a small dish or bowl.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  3. Beef + turniptop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,940 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Breaks down during long cooking to add body and savoury flavour to the liquid.
Ox foot
Its bones and connective tissue release gelatin, which sets the liquid into an aspic.
Cold water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat and bones.

The step that matters

Skim the liquid. Fat and fine particles left in the liquid cloud the aspic and can stop it setting clear; removing them before it cools gives a clear, firm jelly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Parsnipfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot. 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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