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Meat Jelly

A gelatinous dish made by boiling veal and beef, straining the broth, and serving the resulting meat jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,784 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Meat Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the veal and beef into pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a tightly covered jar.

Cook

  1. Submerge the jar in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 4 to 5 hours.

Strain and season

  1. Strain the meat, pressing through a sieve to extract moisture.

  2. You should obtain about 1 cup of strong essence.

  3. Add salt to taste and serve in small spoonfuls as directed.

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. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Breaks down slowly over long cooking, releasing gelatin and savoury juices into the essence.
Beef
Adds deeper meaty flavour and extra gelatin-rich juices to the essence.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 to 5 hours. The jar must stay submerged in gently boiling water for the full time so the meat cooks slowly in its own juices. Too little time leaves the essence weak, and too vigorous a boil can make the broth cloudy.

“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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