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Calf's Foot Stock for Jelly
Take four calf's feet properly dressed and cleansed. Put a gallon of water into a saucepan with the feet, and let them boil very gently but continuously until the liquid is reduced by a half. Strain it, and let it stand until stiff. Then remove every particle of fat from it, pouring a cupful of boiling water over it, and placing a piece of blotting paper on the top after you have skimmed it, to ensure its being quite free from grease. Remember to leave the sediment behind when you use the stock. Time to boil the feet, six or seven hours.
This is a base preparation rather than a finished dish: a neutral gelatine stock that later becomes wine jelly, aspic, or a moulded dessert. Everything depends on getting it clear and getting it grease-free.
- The hinge: a bare simmer"Boil very gently but continuously" means surface movement only, which in modern terms is a bare simmer rather than a boil (the book gives no temperature). A rolling boil emulsifies fat and agitates the sediment, and clouding at that stage is hard to put right by skimming alone.
- Quantities and yieldThe gallon here is an imperial gallon, about 20 US cups; reduced by half you have roughly two to two and a half quarts of stock. Four feet in that volume should give a firm set.
- Sourcing calf's feetThey are no longer a supermarket item; order them from a halal or Latin American butcher, or one who breaks down whole calves. "Properly dressed and cleansed" means scalded, hair and hoof removed, and split — ask the butcher to split them, and blanch them yourself for five minutes and rinse before starting.
- Six or seven hoursThe long time is not a mistake. Collagen in the feet converts to gelatine slowly at low temperature, and cutting the time short leaves you with a stock that sets weakly or not at all. Top up with a little boiling water if the level drops faster than expected.
- DegreasingThe blotting paper trick works, but the easy modern route is to chill the strained stock overnight and lift the fat cap off in one disc. Wipe the last film from the surface with a paper towel wrung out in hot water; the boiling-water rinse in the original does the same job.
- Leaving the sedimentThe bottom of the set block will be cloudy with fine solids. Turn it out and scrape or slice that layer away rather than pouring; once stirred back in, the solids are much harder to remove and the stock will need clarifying.
- Testing the setMelt a spoonful and chill it on a cold saucer for a few minutes. If it is too firm, dilute with water when making the jelly; if slack, reduce the stock further before use.
- StorageRefrigerated it keeps three or four days, or freeze it in blocks for several months. Remelt gently — hard or prolonged heating both flattens the flavour and can weaken the set.
Before commercial powdered gelatine became cheap and reliable, many a clear jelly and aspic in an English kitchen began with a pot of feet, and calf's feet were prized above pig's trotters for a milder, less porky set. The labour involved — six or seven hours of watching, an overnight chill, skimming, blotting — explains why isinglass and later sheet and powdered gelatine were adopted so quickly once they were available, and why the calf's-foot jelly given to invalids in nineteenth-century novels reads as a genuine act of household devotion rather than a token.