Name: Beef Jelly
Ingredients: 1 pound knuckle of veal, chopped; 1 teaspoon soaked gelatine; ¼ pint beef tea

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 ↓

Beef Jelly

Ingredients

1 pound knuckle of veal, chopped
1 teaspoon soaked gelatine
¼ pint beef tea

Directions

Prepare

Prepare beef tea or beef juice as usual.
Boil the chopped veal with the beef tea.
Dissolve the gelatine in a little water, then stir it into the beef tea.

Set and serve

Let the mixture cool until firm.
Serve the beef jelly spread on toast or thin bread-and-butter.

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.

Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).
Veal + teatop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together53 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal: Simmered with the beef tea to release flavour and body into the liquid.
Gelatine: Sets the cooled liquid into a firm jelly that holds its shape.
Beef tea: Forms the savoury liquid base that the jelly is made from.

“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.