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Jellt Cheese

A dish of boiled pigs' feet simmered with spices and set into a jelly, served cold or warmed with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Jellt Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Clean the pigs' feet thoroughly and place them in hot salted water to cover.

  2. Boil slowly until tender and the meat falls from the bone.

  3. Remove the feet from the water, take out all the bones, and cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the jelly

  1. Return the meat to the kettle with 2 quarts of the boiling liquid.

  2. Season with salt, cayenne, sage, sweet marjoram, and finely chopped red peppers. Stir well and simmer slowly for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into deep dishes and let it cool.

Serve

  1. Once cold, cut into slices and warm in a pan with a little vinegar, or serve cold.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Marjoram + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together421 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs' feet
Their collagen-rich skin and connective tissue set into a firm jelly as they cool.
Red peppers
Add colour, mild sweetness and flavour to the seasoned meat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, gelatinous meat when it is warmed.

The step that matters

Simmer the meat in its liquid, then cool it fully. The gelatin released from the feet thickens the cooking liquid as it cools and sets. Enough boiling to extract collagen and a full chill are needed for the mixture to hold together as a jelly rather than stay loose.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, marjoram, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, marjoram, vinegar. 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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