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To Make the Stock for Jelly, and to Clarify It

A clarified calf‑foot stock used as a base for making jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Make the Stock for Jelly, and to Clarify It

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the calf's feet

  1. Scald the calf's feet to remove hair.

  2. Slit the calf's feet in two.

  3. Wash the calf's feet well in warm water.

  4. Place the feet in a stewpan with 6 pints of cold water.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  6. Boil gently for 6-7 hours until the liquid reduces by more than half.

  7. Strain the liquid through a sieve into a basin.

  8. Let the strained liquid cool to set.

  9. Remove the fat from the top of the set stock.

  10. Wash the stock with warm water.

  11. Wipe the jelly with a clean cloth.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure the jelly.

  2. For 1 quart, add 6 oz of loaf sugar.

  3. Add the whites of 5 eggs.

  4. Stir the mixture together while it is cold.

  5. Heat the saucepan without stirring until it boils.

  6. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  7. Add 1 teacupful of cold water.

  8. Boil for 5 minutes more.

  9. Remove from heat and cover for 4 hours near the fire.

Strain and clarify

  1. Dip the jelly bag in hot water.

  2. Wring the bag out.

  3. Fasten the bag to a stand near the fire.

  4. Pour the jelly into the bag.

  5. Let it run through into a basin.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet
Provide gelatin, which sets the cooled stock into a jelly.
Eggs
Whites clarify the stock, collecting impurities as they coagulate with heat.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the clarified jelly its clear body.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture without stirring. Stirring while the egg whites heat breaks them into fine pieces that stay suspended and cloud the jelly. Letting the whites rise and coagulate as the liquid boils traps impurities so they can be strained out cleanly.

“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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