Skip to main content
Main

A Cheaper Meat Jelly

A gelatinous broth made by slow‑cooking pig's foot, veal or beef neck, onion, carrot, parsley, ham, and spices in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 stock

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

  2. Add 5.5 pints of water and boil very slowly for 5 to 6 hours.

  3. For a stronger jelly, add more ham and bones from unboiled meat, poultry, or game.

  4. Use the cooking liquid from boiled fowl or veal instead of water if available.

Make the glaze

  1. To make the glaze, boil the clear gravy or jelly down to a thin cream consistency, stirring constantly.

  2. When it thickens and jellies when dropped from a spoon, remove it from heat immediately to prevent burning.

Use the glaze

  1. To use, melt the glaze gently in a pan of boiling water and brush it onto the meat.

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

Pig's foot
Adds gelatin from bones and skin, which lets the stock set into a jelly.
Neck of veal or beef
Contributes meat flavor and collagen that enriches the stock and helps it gel.
Lean ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the stock.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory background flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Removing the glaze from heat at the right moment. The reduced jelly can scorch quickly as its sugars and proteins concentrate, so it must come off the heat as soon as it thickens and sets when dropped from a spoon.

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.

More meat jelly recipes

Savory 11Cold 3Soup 3 See all 54 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes