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Calves' Foot Broth

A broth made by simmering calves' feet, reduced, strained, and flavored with wine, sugar, butter, and citrus or mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Calves' Foot Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Soak the calves' feet in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil the feet in 2 quarts of water until reduced to less than 1 quart.

  3. Strain the broth and let it cool until it forms a jelly.

Finish the jelly

  1. Take the desired amount of jelly, add a little wine and white sugar, and heat gently while stirring continuously.

  2. Once dissolved, add a small bit of butter and flavor with lemon or orange peel, or a blade of mace.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Calves' feet
Release gelatin as they simmer, which lets the broth set into a jelly when cooled.
Water
Extracts collagen and flavour from the feet during the long boil, forming the broth.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savoury broth and the wine.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the jelly.
Butter
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the finished jelly.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth and heating the jelly gently. Boiling until under 1 quart concentrates the gelatin so the broth sets firmly on cooling. When reheating the jelly, keep the heat gentle and stir constantly, because strong heat can scorch the sugar and wine and gelatin can break down, leaving the jelly weak or grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, wine, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, butter. 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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