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Calf's Foot Broth

A broth made by simmering calf's feet with water, onion, carrot, mace, salt, wine, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Calf's Foot Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Break the calf's feet into pieces and place them in an iron pot.

  2. Add 2 quarts of water, 1 onion, 1 carrot, a little mace, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil for 2 to 3 hours, adding more water if it boils away.

  4. Strain the broth and stir in 1 cup of good wine and 1 teaspoon of soy sauce.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Carrot + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,271 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet
Release gelatin and collagen into the water, giving the broth body and a setting quality.
Water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the bones and feet.
Good wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished broth.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth and a little colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 to 3 hours, adding more water if it boils away. A gentle, sustained simmer slowly draws gelatin out of the feet. If the liquid boils down too far, the broth becomes concentrated and can taste harsh, so topping up with water keeps the extraction steady.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, wine, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, wine, sauce. 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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