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Eestorativb Meat Jelly

A savoury jelly made by slowly cooking beef shin and ox foot with vegetables and water until the liquid sets.

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 ↓

Eestorativb Meat Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°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.

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces.

Cook slowly

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

  2. Cook the jar in the oven at 350°F (175°C) or in a saucepan of boiling water for 7 to 9 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Once cooled, slowly open the jar, strain, skim, and 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
Adds meat flavor and gelatin-rich connective tissue that dissolves into the broth during long cooking.
Ox foot
Its bones and connective tissue release gelatin, giving the broth its jelly-like body as it cools.
Cold water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor and gelatin from the meat and bones.
Carrot
Contributes mild sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Turnip
Adds a subtle sweetness and earthy aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Blanching the ox foot. Boiling the ox foot briefly and then scraping it removes impurities and residue that would otherwise cloud the broth and add off flavors during the long cooking.

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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