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Dessert

Clear Jelly

A clear gelatin dessert made from calf's feet, lemon, sugar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Clear Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the calves' feet in a saucepan with 3 quarts of water and boil until reduced to 3 pints.

  2. Remove from heat and strain through a sieve into a bowl; discard the fat and let it sit overnight.

Clarify and strain

  1. In a saucepan, combine the stock, white wine, lemon juice, lemon peel, sugar, beaten egg whites, and cinnamon.

  2. If using for molds, add 1 ounce of isinglass before heating.

  3. Heat the mixture, stirring gently until it rises, then remove from heat.

  4. Repeat the heating process, then strain through a 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' feet
Release gelatin into the stock, which sets the jelly once chilled.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities as they heat, so they can be strained out for a clear jelly.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture, stirring gently until it rises. Egg whites coagulate and trap cloudy particles as the mixture heats. Stirring too hard breaks up the foam and mixes the impurities back in, clouding the jelly. Let it rise gently, then strain carefully through the flannel bag.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, lemon, sugar, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, lemon, sugar, 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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