Boot Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and extract
Clean the boot thoroughly.
Boil the boot with soda under pressure of about 2 atmospheres.
Combine the tannic acid in the leather with salt to make tannate of soda.
Finish the jelly
Remove the gelatin that rises to the top and dry it.
Mix the dried gelatin with suitable flavoring material to make the jelly.
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
What each ingredient does
- Boot
- Leather supplies collagen, which breaks down during boiling into the gelatin that forms the jelly.
- Coarse sea salt
- Combines with the tannic acid in the leather to form tannate of soda, per the record.
The step that matters
Boil the boot with soda under pressure. Pressurized boiling raises the temperature, which speeds the breakdown of collagen into gelatin. Too little heat or time leaves little gelatin to skim off.
“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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