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Calf's-Foot Jelly
It is made thus: Take two calf's feet, scald, and scrape the hair clean, take off the hoofs and remove the fat between the toes, and wash all thoroughly in warm water. Put the feet into cold water and let it gradually come to a boil, carefully skimming. Simmer six or seven hours, strain through a sieve and let it cool. When it gets firm, remove the fat from the top, the jelly from the sediment, and put the jelly into a saucepan. To each quart of jelly add six ounces of best granulated or loaf sugar and the shells and whites of five eggs, thoroughly beaten. Stir all together while cold, but not after it begins to heat. Let it simmer five minutes; throw in a teacup of cold water and let it boil five minutes more; cover the saucepan closely and let it remain where it will keep hot for half an hour. Have ready a flannel bag, wrung out of hot water, and pour in the jelly, keeping all quite near the fire to prevent the jelly setting before it is strained. If it is not clear the first time it runs through pass it through again.
The jelly bag is made larger at the top and narrows to a point, and is best of closely woven flannel, with the seams double sewed. Wine or lemon juice may be added before straining if desired.
A clarified gelatin jelly built from scratch, in the days before packet gelatine was reliable or cheap. The technique is sound; the main adjustments are sourcing and a few points of timing.
- The hinge: do not stir once it heatsThe beaten egg whites and shells must be mixed into cold jelly, then left alone. Stirring after the pan warms breaks up the coagulating raft and the impurities go back into suspension, which is why the recipe warns against it and offers a second straining.
- Sourcing calf's feetSplit calf's feet are a special order from a butcher and usually arrive already scalded and scraped, so the hair and hoof work described here is rarely needed. Pig's trotters are the common substitute and set just as firmly, though the flavour is heavier.
- The six-to-seven-hour simmerThis is not negotiable padding; it is the time needed to hydrolyse collagen into gelatin. Keep the water at a bare shiver, since a rolling boil emulsifies fat into the stock and clouds it, which the later egg-white clarification may not fully correct.
- Weights and volumesSix ounces of sugar per quart is a little under a cup of granulated sugar to four cups of jelly. "A teacup" is not a fixed measure in books of this date; reckon it anywhere from four to six ounces. Its job is to arrest the boil and settle the raft, not to dilute.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in cones and broken up as needed, prized because it was cleaner than most granulated sugar of the period. Ordinary granulated sugar today is the same thing.
- The flannel bagA conical jelly bag of doubled flannel can be replaced by a sieve lined with several layers of damp muslin or a scalded pillowcase. Wet the cloth in hot water first and let the jelly drip without squeezing; pressing forces sediment through and defeats the clarification.
- Keep it warm while strainingThe jelly will gel in the bag if the kitchen is cold, which is why the recipe says to keep everything quite near the fire. Work quickly and keep the bowl and bag warm.
- Wine and lemonAdd these before straining, as directed, so any cloudiness from the juice is caught by the cloth. Acid slightly weakens the set, so go lightly if the jelly is to be turned out of a mould.
- Yield and servingTwo feet give roughly a quart to a quart and a half of finished jelly, enough for six to eight small moulds or glasses. Chill at least four hours; it keeps three or four days refrigerated.
Calf's-foot jelly earned its place in the invalid cookery of Victorian and Edwardian medicine, which regarded it as concentrated nourishment in a form an invalid could swallow: clear, cool, faintly sweet and, with wine added, mildly restorative. The gelatin came from the animal itself, extracted over most of a working day, and the laborious clarification with egg white and shell existed to make the result transparent, since cloudiness suggested to the period eye that something was unclean. Packaged gelatine sold in sheets and powders was available by the later nineteenth century and steadily displaced the feet, which is part of why a recipe like this reads as old-fashioned. The dish is a fixture of nineteenth-century fiction and household manuals as the thing carried to a sick neighbour, and it survives in modern kitchens chiefly as a relative of aspic and of the clarified consomm\