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Dr. Ratcliff's Pork Jelly

A gelatinous pork broth made from a leg of pork, simmered with spices and clarified, served chilled with optional butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dr. Ratcliff's Pork Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Beat the leg of pork.

  2. Break the bone of the pork leg.

  3. Place the pork leg in a pot with 3 gallons of water.

  4. Simmer the pork until the liquid is reduced to 1 gallon.

  5. Add ½ ounce mace and ½ ounce nutmeg to the pot.

  6. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

  7. When the liquid is cold, remove the fat.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the lambs' feet in water for 10 minutes to remove the leg bone.

  2. Combine the lambs' feet with 1 pint of water mixed with flour and salt in a stewpan.

  3. Cook over heat, stirring frequently until boiling.

  4. Add the onion, celery, parsley, and parsnip to the stew.

  5. Boil gently for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve one coffee cupful at the beginning and end of the day, adding salt to taste.

  2. Serve plain or with melted butter and parsley.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pork + lambtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Its meat and bone release body and savoury flavour into the stock.
Lambs' feet
Their collagen turns to gelatin, helping the liquid set firm when cold.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats and comes to a boil.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the stock.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the stock.
Onion
Softens during gentle boiling and adds savoury aroma to the stew.

The step that matters

Remove the fat when the liquid is cold. Fat floats on the surface and solidifies as the liquid cools, so it can be lifted off in one piece. Leaving it in makes the jelly greasy and cloudy in texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, nutmeg, lamb, flour, onion, celery, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, nutmeg, lamb, flour, onion, celery, 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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