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Calf's Feet, Boiled, and Parsley and Butter

A boiled calf's feet dish simmered with bacon, butter, lemon, herbs, and spices, finished with parsley and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Calf's Feet, Boiled, and Parsley and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the calf's feet as far as the first joint and soak them in warm water for 2 hours.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, combine the bacon, butter, lemon juice, onion, herbs, spices, and seasoning.

  2. Add the feet and pour in enough water to cover everything.

  3. Simmer gently for about 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the feet, place them on a dish, and cover with parsley and butter.

  2. Strain the cooking liquid and reserve it for use in gravies.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet
Provide gelatinous collagen that softens during long simmering and thickens the cooking liquid.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat and flavour to the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished dish a silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fat and balances the flavour.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 3 hours. A gentle simmer breaks down collagen into gelatin slowly, while a hard boil toughens the meat and can cloud the liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, pepper, onion, clove, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, pepper, onion, clove, parsley. 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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