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Calves Feet Broth

A clear broth made from boiled calves' feet, sweetened with jelly, wine, sugar, nutmeg, and finished with egg yolk, butter, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Calves Feet Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the calves' feet in 3 quarts of water until reduced to half.

  2. Strain the broth and set it aside, removing the fat.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the jelly, sweet wine, sugar, and nutmeg, and heat until just about to boil.

  2. Take a small amount of the mixture and gradually beat it into the egg yolk.

  3. Add the butter and stir everything together without boiling.

  4. Grate some fresh lemon peel into the mixture before serving.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' feet
Break down into gelatin, giving the broth body and a jelly-like set.
Egg yolk
Thickens the mixture gently and adds richness when tempered with warm liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel in the finished mixture.
Sweet wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the mixture.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk without boiling. Egg yolk can scramble if it meets hot liquid too quickly. Tempering it with a small amount of warm mixture first, then keeping the mixture below boiling, helps it thicken smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sugar, egg, butter, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg, butter, lemon. 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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