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Dessert

Milk Jelly From Cow-heel

A gelatinous milk dessert made by simmering cow heel and cinnamon, then straining and sweetening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Milk Jelly From Cow-heel

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Buy a dressed cow heel from a tripe shop.

  2. Cut the cow heel into small pieces.

  3. Place the pieces in a saucepan with 1 quart of milk and 2 inches of cinnamon stick.

Stew

  1. Cover the saucepan with a lid and secure it with paper tied tightly.

  2. Put the saucepan in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for at least 3 hours.

  3. If no oven is available, place the saucepan by the side of the fire to stew.

Strain and set

  1. After stewing, remove the saucepan from the oven, take off the lid, and strain the milk into a basin.

  2. Sweeten the milk according to taste and set aside until the jelly is firm.

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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cow heel
Provides gelatin, which sets the milk into a jelly as it stews.
Milk
Forms the body of the jelly and carries the flavour of the stewed heel.

The step that matters

Long, gentle stewing. Collagen in the heel only breaks down into gelatin with prolonged low, moist heat. Too fast or too hot a stew can scorch the milk and leave the heel too weak to set the jelly.

“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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