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Dr. Ratcliff’s Restorative Pork Jelly

A gelatinous pork broth made by simmering a pork leg in water with mace, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Dr. Ratcliff’s Restorative Pork Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer

  1. Break the pork leg and simmer it over a gentle fire with 3 gallons of water.

  2. Simmer until the liquid reduces to 1 gallon.

  3. Add mace and nutmeg and let them stew in the mixture.

Strain and skim

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. When the liquid is cold, remove the fat.

Serve

  1. Serve in a chocolate cup, adding salt to taste.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pork + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,565 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Pork + nutmegtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,825 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Well-fed pork leg
Its collagen breaks down into gelatin during long simmering, helping the cooled liquid set into a jelly.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the broth as it stews.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that deepens the broth as it stews.

The step that matters

Remove the fat when the liquid is cold. Fat rises and solidifies on top of cooled stock, so it can be lifted off in one piece. Skimming while the liquid is warm leaves fat dispersed through the jelly, making it greasy and cloudy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, mace):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, mace. 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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