Skip to main content
Main

Beef Jelly for Invalids

A gelatinous beef broth made with calf's feet, ham, onions, carrots, cloves, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beef Jelly for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Place the onions, carrots, cloves, and black pepper in a pot. Add the sugar, then place the ham on top.

  2. Add the calf's feet, followed by the beef.

Cook

  1. Do not add water; let it cook on the side of the range until reduced to a soft mass.

  2. Add 1 quart of water and bring to a boil for 1 hour.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, remove the fat from the top.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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 that lets the stock set into an aspic.
Beef
Adds meaty flavor to the stock as it cooks down.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the stock.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory base flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Reducing before adding water. Cooking the meat and calf's feet without water until they form a soft mass concentrates flavor and extracts gelatin-rich juices, which the later water and boiling build upon. Skipping or rushing this reduction leaves the stock thin and weakly flavored.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, pepper, sugar, ham, beef):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, pepper, sugar, ham, beef. 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.

More beef aspic recipes

Spiced 3 See all 10 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes