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Boiled Calf's Feet and Parsley and Butter

A stew of calf's feet simmered with bacon, butter, lemon juice, 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 ↓

Boiled Calf's Feet and Parsley and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the calf's feet in warm water for 2 hours.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine bacon, butter, lemon juice, onion, herbs, cloves, mace, and seasoning.

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

  3. Stew gently for about 3 hours.

Serve and keep the liquor

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

  2. Strain the cooking liquid and store 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 slow stewing and thickens the liquid.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat and flavour to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the stew and the final topping.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the stew.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently for about 3 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets collagen in the feet break down into gelatin slowly. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the liquid cloudy.

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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