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Pork-jelly

A savory gelatin made from a pork leg simmered 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 ↓

Pork-jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the leg of pork and break the bone.

Make the jelly

  1. Place it in a pot with 3 gallons of water and simmer until reduced to 1 gallon.

  2. Add ½ ounce of mace and ½ ounce of nutmeg to the pot.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  4. Remove the fat from the top.

  5. Season with coarse sea 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

Leg of pork
Provides collagen-rich connective tissue and bone that release gelatin as the liquid simmers, setting it into jelly.
Water
Extracts flavor and gelatin from the pork during long simmering, concentrating the liquid as it reduces.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the broth.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Remove the fat from the top. Fat that is not skimmed after straining stays on the surface and can make the jelly greasy and cloudy. Cooling lets the fat solidify so it lifts off cleanly.

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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