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Meat Jelly

A gelatinous dish made by simmering calf feet with vegetables, spices, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Meat Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine calves' feet and water in a kettle.

  2. Add sliced onions, carrots, black pepper, celery seed, and herbs in a muslin bag.

  3. Bring the mixture to a slow boil.

  4. Simmer for eight hours, adding water as needed.

  5. Strain the liquid.

Set and clarify the jelly

  1. Let the liquid cool until it jells.

  2. Skim the grease from the top.

  3. Return the jelly to the kettle.

  4. Add lemon juice or tartaric acid.

  5. Heat to 180°F (82°C).

  6. Mix egg whites with an equal volume of water and crushed eggshells.

  7. Stir the mixture into the melted jelly.

  8. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  9. Strain through a wet flannel bag.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' feet
Their collagen dissolves into the liquid and sets into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
As they coagulate with heat, they trap cloudy particles, clarifying the jelly.
Lemon juice or tartaric acid
Acid brightens the flavour and helps the jelly set clear and firm.
Sliced onions
They add aromatic flavour to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Bringing the egg white mixture to a boil. Egg whites must be stirred in thoroughly and heated so they coagulate and trap cloudy particles. Stirring in unevenly or boiling too hard can leave the jelly cloudy or cause it to break up, so stir steadily and watch the heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, celery, lemon, egg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, celery, lemon, egg. 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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