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Cow-Heel Stock for Jelly
Cow-heels may be substituted for calf's feet in making stock for jelly. It is best to stew the heels the day before you want to make the jelly, so that the broth may get cold, and be more thoroughly freed from fat and sediment. Buy two heels that have been well cleansed and scalded, but not boiled. Divide them into four, and pour over them three quarts of cold water, bring them slowly to a boil, skim the liquid carefully, and simmer it gently for seven hours, or until it is reduced to three pints. After this, proceed exactly as with stock made from calf's feet. If there is any doubt about the firmness of the jelly, an ounce of isinglass may be added. Cow-heels are cheaper than calf's feet, and quite as nourishing, though perhaps a trifle stronger in flavour. Probable cost, 4d. to 8d. each. Sufficient, two heels for three pints of stock.
A base recipe rather than a finished dish: a gelatine-rich stock to be flavoured, clarified and set as a sweet or savoury jelly. Most of what needs translating is the hardware and the shopping.
- The hinge: never let it gallopBring the pot to the boil slowly, skim thoroughly, then hold it at a bare tremble for the full seven hours. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and drives fine particles through the liquid, giving a cloudy stock that no amount of later clarifying will fully rescue.
- Cow-heel, and where to find itCow-heel is the foot of a cow or ox, split and cleaned. Supermarkets rarely carry it; halal, Caribbean, West African and traditional English butchers do, often labelled ox foot or trotter. Ask for it split and scalded, not pre-boiled, since boiling has already drawn out the gelatine you are paying for.
- Imperial measuresThe book's quarts and pints are imperial: three quarts is about 3.4 litres, and the target of three pints is about 1.7 litres. That is a reduction by half.
- IsinglassIsinglass is a collagen product from fish swim bladders, still sold to brewers and winemakers as a fining agent. As a setting agent it has largely been replaced by leaf or powdered gelatine. Judge whether you need it by chilling a teaspoon of the finished stock on a cold saucer for ten minutes rather than by adding a fixed quantity.
- Why the overnight restChilling is not just convenience. The fat sets in a solid cap that lifts off cleanly, and the sediment sinks and firms so the clear stock can be spooned off the top. Warm stock cannot be degreased anything like as thoroughly.
- "Proceed exactly as with calf's feet"A cross-reference to the calf's-feet stock recipe. In standard practice of the period that meant clarifying the melted stock with whisked egg white and crushed shell, plus your flavourings, brought slowly to the boil and then strained through a scalded jelly bag without squeezing. Expect to lose some volume at that stage.
- YieldTwo heels give roughly 1.7 litres of stock, which should be enough for a jelly to serve six or so once sweetened, flavoured and clarified. It will keep a few days refrigerated and freezes in blocks.
Cow-heel occupies a particular rung on the Victorian economic ladder. Calf's foot jelly was the standard restorative for invalids and the standard base for moulded table jellies, but calves' feet were dearer than the feet of grown cattle, which came cheap from the tripe dressers who already handled the cleaning and scalding. The book quotes fourpence to eightpence a heel, and the note that cow-heel is "quite as nourishing" is aimed squarely at a reader who has been told otherwise. Before commercial gelatine became cheap and standard, clear jellies in an English household commonly began with a long, patient extraction of collagen from feet, and the whole apparatus of jelly bags, egg-white clarifying and overnight settling existed to turn that murky brown broth into something transparent enough to put on a table.