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Mutton Jelly

A gelatinous broth made from mutton shanks, beef shin, toasted bread crust, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the mutton shanks in cold water for 12 hours, then scrub them well.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the shanks, cut-up beef, and toasted bread crust with the cold water.

Make the broth

  1. Simmer gently for 5 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture into a basin and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cool, remove the fat from the top.

  2. Warm up as much as needed before serving.

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. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shanks
Long simmering draws gelatin and flavour from the bone and connective tissue into the liquid.
Shin of beef
Adds further connective tissue that enriches the broth's body and savoury depth as it simmers.
Toasted bread crust
Toasting gives the broth a browned, roasted aroma and a slightly deeper colour.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after cooling. Fat that is not skimmed from the cooled broth sits on the surface and makes the jelly greasy and cloudy once it sets.

“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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