Calf-Foot
4 calf feet 4 quarts cold water 1/2 box gelatine 1 cup sugar 2 lemons 2 inch stick cinnamon 3 eggs 1 pint wine Wash and split the feet, add the water and cook slowly until the flesh separates from the bones and the stock is reduced to three pints. Strain. When cold remove the fat, add the whites and shells of the eggs, the cinnamon, sugar, the gelatine which has been soaked in 1/2 cup cold water twenty minutes, and the juice of the lemons. Stir until hot. Let it simmer fifteen minutes. Add the wine. Skim and strain through a fine napkin into tumblers
This is calf's-foot jelly, the classic clarified wine jelly of the sickroom and the dessert table. Nothing here is unsafe, but almost everything about it assumes a kitchen that no longer exists.
- The hinge: do not stir once it clearsEgg white and crushed shell are stirred in cold, then heated while stirring so the raft can gather the cloudiness. Once it rises and the liquid simmers, stop stirring entirely and let it sit for the fifteen minutes; breaking the raft puts the murk straight back in.
- Calf feetOrder them from a halal or Latin butcher, or a farm butcher shop; they are rarely in a supermarket case. Split ones are easier, and four feet is a large stockpot's worth. Reducing four quarts to three pints will take several hours at a bare simmer rather than a boil; hard boiling emulsifies fat into the stock and clouds it, which makes the later clarification harder.
- "1/2 box gelatine"A box of granulated gelatine of this period held four envelopes of about a quarter ounce each, so half a box is roughly two envelopes, about two level tablespoons. Box sizes were not standard, though, so treat this as approximate — the calf feet are doing most of the setting work and the gelatine is insurance.
- Chill the stock before defattingRefrigerate the strained stock overnight; the fat lifts off as a solid cap. Any fat left behind will float as a slick on the finished jelly and will also interfere with clarification.
- StrainingA "fine napkin" means a doubled square of undyed linen or several layers of rinsed cheesecloth in a sieve. Let it drip on its own — squeezing the cloth forces sediment through and undoes the whole clarifying step.
- The wineSherry or Madeira were common choices. The recipe adds the wine after the fifteen-minute simmer; adding it off the heat helps the alcohol and aroma survive. A pint is generous by modern taste, and cutting it to a cup gives a firmer set.
- Yield and servingAbout two quarts once the wine goes in (three pints of stock plus a pint of wine), filling eight to ten tumblers or small glasses. Chill at least four hours. If a test spoonful on a cold saucer stays loose, remelt gently and add another softened envelope of gelatine.
Calf's-foot jelly was long regarded as a standard restorative for invalids and new mothers, prized because it was thought nourishing and because it slipped down when nothing else would; it also appeared, spiked with wine and set in glasses, as a genteel dessert. Making it was a two-day labor: the long extraction of gelatin from the feet, the chilling and defatting, the egg-white clarification borrowed from consommé, and a fine napkin. Its survival in print catches the dish near the end of its run.