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Cow-heel Jelly

A gelatinous dish made by boiling cow's heel with fowl, veal, beef or mutton, broth, herbs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cow-heel Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Split the cow's heel.

  2. Boil it in broth until quite soft.

  3. In a covered jug, stew the fowl, veal, and beef or mutton without water, in a pan of boiling water or in an oven for several hours.

Combine and strain

  1. Add the good broth, sweet herbs, bay leaf, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it stand together.

  3. Cut the cow's heel into small pieces.

  4. Add it to the mixture.

  5. Strain out the hard meat, leaving the cow's heel to be eaten.

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).

  2. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cow's heel
Softens into gelatinous pieces that give the jelly its body and setting power.
Fowl
Slow-stewed to release savory flavour and gelatin into the broth.
Veal
Slow-stewed to release gelatin and rich meaty flavour into the broth.
Beef or mutton
Slow-stewed to add depth of meaty flavour and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Stewing the meats without water. Covered, slow cooking without added water concentrates the meat juices and gelatin, so the broth becomes rich and able to set into a jelly. Rushing with high heat or uncovering the pot would let the liquid evaporate and leave the broth weak.

“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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