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Dessert

Milk Jelly

Milk jelly is a gelatin dessert made from calf's feet, water, sugar, milk, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Milk Jelly

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Milk Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Boil the calves' feet in 2 quarts of water until well boiled and the water is reduced by half.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool; remove the fat and jelly from the sediment.

Make the milk jelly

  1. In a saucepan, combine the jelly with sugar and milk.

  2. Add the egg whites and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Calves' feet
Their collagen releases gelatin as they simmer, which sets the liquid into a jelly.
Milk
Adds creaminess, body and moisture to the jelly.
Egg whites
Coagulate when boiled and trap fine impurities so they can be strained out, clarifying the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the jelly.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites and boil for 15 minutes. As the egg whites heat, they set into a mass that gathers cloudy particles. Straining afterward removes this mass, so the jelly comes out clear rather than cloudy.

“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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