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Calfs-foot Jelly

A gelatin made from calf's foot stock, lemon, spices, and egg, clarified and set with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Calfs-foot Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the foot into 4 to 6 pieces, removing all marrow and fat.

  2. Wash and scrape the foot well in warm water.

  3. Place the foot in a deep pan and cover it with cold water. Bring to a boil, then rinse well.

  4. Return the foot to the pan with 5 pints of water and simmer slowly for 6 to 7 hours.

  5. Strain the stock through a fine sieve into a basin and let it cool.

  6. To clear the jelly, remove all grease from the stock with a spoon dipped in hot water.

  7. Wipe the surface with a cloth wrung out of hot water.

Make the jelly

  1. Rinse a well-lined deep pan.

  2. Add the stock, gelatin (if needed), sherry, cloves, and cinnamon to the pan.

  3. Wash, dry, and peel the lemon thinly. Add the peel and lemon juice to the mixture.

  4. Add the crushed shell and white of egg.

  5. Place over heat and whisk until frothy and just boiling.

  6. Remove the whisk and allow the mixture to boil up to the top of the pan.

  7. Draw the pan to the side of the fire, cover with a plate, and let it settle for 10 minutes.

Clarify and finish

  1. Tie a linen cloth to the legs of an upside-down kitchen chair.

  2. Pour boiling water through the cloth.

  3. Carefully pour the jelly through the cloth into a scalded bowl and add the brandy.

  4. Strain the jelly 3 or 4 times until perfectly clear.

  5. Cover with a blanket and let it drip.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 or ox foot
Releases gelatin and body into the stock during long, slow simmering.
Egg shell and white
Clarifies the stock as the white and shell bind impurities that are then strained off.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and sweetness to the stock.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Clearing the jelly by straining. Egg white and shell coagulate and trap cloudy particles as the mixture simmers and settles; the jelly only turns clear if it is not stirred or boiled hard during the settling and drip stages, and if grease is fully removed first.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, clove, cinnamon, egg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, clove, cinnamon, egg, brandy. 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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