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Soup

Jelly Stock

A gelatinous stock made from calves' feet, fish, vegetables, and seasonings, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jelly Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the calves' feet stock

  1. Place the calves' feet in a 6-quart stewpan and cover the stewpan with water.

  2. Boil gently for 4 hours.

  3. Remove the meat from the calves' feet, place the meat in cold water, and trim the meat for use.

  4. Return the trimmings to the stock and boil the stock until strong.

Build the fish stock

  1. Melt the butter in a large soup pot.

  2. Add the fish, bones, onions, thyme, parsley, celery, carrots, mace, bay leaves, and anchovies, then add 1 pint of water.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours until dry at the bottom.

  4. Fill the pot with hot water and boil for 3 hours, ensuring it does not boil fast.

  5. Strain through a tammy sieve.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Calves' feet
Release gelatine into the water, giving the finished stock its jelly-like setting body.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and aromatics before the liquid is added.
Anchovies
Add a deep savoury, salty background flavour that rounds out the stock.
Onions
Provide sweetness and savoury depth as they cook down into the stock.

The step that matters

Keep the fish pot at a gentle simmer. Fast boiling clouds the stock and breaks up delicate fish, while gentle heat extracts flavour and keeps the liquid clear for a clean set.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, thyme, parsley, celery, carrot):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, thyme, parsley, celery, 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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