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Calf's Foot Jelly, Lemon
Mix a quart of strong calf's foot stock, clear and free from fat and sediment, with a cupful of strained lemon-juice and three-quarters of a pound of loaf sugar, which has been rubbed on the rind of two lemons. Put these into a saucepan with the well-beaten whites and crushed shells of five eggs. Proceed as for calf's foot jelly. Time to boil, by the side of the fire, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per pint. Sufficient, one pint and a half of jelly for five or six people.
A clarified lemon jelly built on gelatine extracted from calves' feet rather than from a packet. Everything here depends on the egg-white raft, so read that point first.
- Do not stir once it boilsThe beaten whites and crushed shells coagulate into a raft that traps the cloud of fine particles. Bring it up gently, let it rise, and leave it alone; stirring breaks the raft and the jelly will never come clear. Pour it through a scalded jelly bag or a double thickness of muslin without squeezing, and if the first run is cloudy, pass it through again.
- "By the side of the fire"Range cookery language for the cooler edge of the hob. On a modern burner this is the lowest setting that keeps a bare tremble at the surface for the full twenty minutes — a rolling boil will emulsify fat back into the liquid.
- Calf's foot stockSplit calves' feet simmered for six to eight hours give a stock that sets hard when cold; ask a butcher to order and split them. Chill the stock and lift off every trace of solid fat, then wipe the surface with a cloth wrung out in hot water. Any fat left behind will show as a greasy film on the finished jelly.
- If you use gelatine insteadThe stock is the point of the dish, but the same method works with a strong gelatine solution. Judge it by the set of the cold stock rather than by weight, and note that clarifying is much less necessary — the reason for the raft is the murkiness of real foot stock.
- UnitsAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, so about 5 US cups. Three-quarters of a pound of sugar is 340 g. A cupful of lemon juice is roughly 8 fl oz, which will take five or six good lemons; taste before setting, as modern lemons vary a great deal in sharpness.
- Loaf sugar and the rindLoaf sugar came as a hard cone broken into lumps; ordinary granulated or caster sugar does the same job. Rubbing the lumps over the zest was a common way of extracting citrus oil — with loose sugar, rub the zest into it with your fingers instead.
- SettingRinse the mould with cold water, fill, and chill four to six hours or overnight. To turn out, dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into place.
- Yield and costA pint and a half serves five or six as the book says — small portions by current standards. The "1s. 6d. per pint" is the book's own period cost estimate and has no modern equivalent.
Calf's foot jelly was the standard gelatine of the English kitchen before commercial leaf and powdered gelatine became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth century, and it carried a double life: a dessert at dinner and a nourishing food for invalids and new mothers, sent round to sickbeds in covered pots. The lemon version is the plainest of the family, and the clarifying method — egg whites and shells boiled up to raise a raft, then a slow drip through a flannel jelly bag — is the same technique used for consommé. Its presence in a household dictionary of the 1870s onward is a sign of a kitchen still doing its own extraction; within a generation, packet gelatine had made the split calves' foot largely a memory.