Why it works: Beef and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,784 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓
Portable Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the broth
Cut the beef and veal into small pieces.
Remove the marrow from the bones and break the bones.
Add the bones to a stewpan with the meat and 2 gallons of cold water.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Skim carefully, adding ½ cup of cold water two or three times to help the scum rise.
Reduce the heat.
Let it simmer gently for 8 to 10 hours.
Strain the soup through a fine sieve.
Let it cool overnight.
Remove the fat from the top.
Pour off the soup, leaving the sediment behind.
Make the jelly
In a saucepan, combine the soup with 12 peppercorns and 1 teaspoon of salt.
Boil uncovered until the liquid thickens.
Pour into a clean jar.
Place the jar over gentle heat until it becomes thick and ropy.
Test a spoonful; if it jellies, it's done.
Set and dry
Pour into small jelly pots.
Let the pots cool.
Once cold, turn out the shapes.
Place them on flannel in a warm place to dry.
Store in tin canisters.
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.
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Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,784 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Shin of beef
- Breaks down into gelatin, giving the broth body that sets into a jelly.
- Knuckle of veal
- Bones and connective tissue release gelatin, helping the broth thicken and set.
- Cold water
- Extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat and bones during slow simmering.
The step that matters
Skimming the scum. Scum rises as proteins coagulate during heating; removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Adding cold water makes the scum rise so it can be skimmed.
“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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