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A Cheaper Meat Jelly

A gelatinous broth made by slow boiling calf's foot, veal or beef neck, onion, carrot, parsley, ham, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Cheaper Meat Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the calf's foot, neck of veal or beef, onion, carrot, parsley, spice, ham, and water in a large pot.

  2. Boil very slowly for 5 to 6 hours until a strong jelly forms.

Optional refinements

  1. For improved flavor, add more ham or bones from unboiled meat, poultry, or game.

  2. If available, use the cooking liquid from fowls or veal instead of water.

  3. Avoid stewing vegetables in the jelly for better preservation.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's foot
Its collagen breaks down into gelatin, which is what sets the jelly.
Neck of veal or beef
Adds meat and connective tissue that enrich the flavor and body of the broth.
Ham
Contributes salty, savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil very slowly for 5 to 6 hours. A gentle simmer extracts collagen as gelatin without cloudiness or fat breaking into the liquid. A hard boil emulsifies fat and clouds the jelly, and a weak extraction leaves it too loose to set firmly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, parsley, ham):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, parsley, ham. 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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