Home › Invalid Recipes › Savory Beef Jelly
Savory Beef Jelly
3/4 lb. lean beef 1 pint (2 cups) cold water Salt 10 white whole peppers 1 clove 2 parsley sprigs I bay leaf I blade mace I celery stalk 1 tablespoonful powdered gelatine 4 tablespoonfuls boiling water Scrape the beef with a sharp knife, and remove any fat and skin; put it into an earthenware dish with the cold water and a pinch of salt. Tie the seasonings
A clarified beef essence set with gelatine, meant to be eaten cold by the spoonful. The whole point is slow extraction: the meat must never boil, or the jelly turns cloudy and tastes stewed rather than clean.
- Scraping the beefScraping with a knife edge, rather than mincing, shreds the muscle fibre and leaves the connective tissue behind, which is what keeps the finished liquid clear. A coarse mince is an acceptable substitute; a food processor is not, as it emulsifies fat and fine particles into the broth.
- The earthenware dishThe recipe calls for earthenware, which holds gentle heat evenly. Any lidded ovenproof stoneware or enamelled cast-iron pot of about a quart will do.
- Heat, not boilingEssences of this kind were drawn very gently, most often in a covered jar standing in a pan of water on the stove, or in a slow oven. The liquid must not be allowed to break into a simmer or it clouds.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold in whole "blades" and increasingly hard to find. A pinch of ground mace, added at the end and strained out, gives the same warm note; nutmeg is close but sweeter.
- Tying the seasoningsThe peppercorns, clove, parsley, bay, mace and celery go into a muslin bag or a tea infuser so they can be lifted out whole. Loose spices in a jelly that will not be strained twice are a nuisance.
- The gelatineOne tablespoon of powdered gelatine is roughly a standard envelope, enough to set a pint firmly. Modern powdered gelatine performs better if sprinkled over cold water to swell for five minutes before the hot liquid is added; dumping it straight into boiling water tends to leave lumps that never dissolve.
- Clearing and strainingStrain through a scalded cloth or a coffee filter while hot, and lift off every trace of fat once cold, or the surface sets greasy. A cold spoon drawn across the top, or a sheet of kitchen paper laid on it, takes the last film.
- Yield and keepingAbout two cups, or four small invalid portions. Being a low-salt, low-acid meat gel it spoils quickly: refrigerate at once, use within two days, and discard rather than re-set anything left standing at room temperature.
"Invalid cookery" was a standard department of English and American household manuals through much of the nineteenth century, and beef tea was its centrepiece a concentrated extract of raw beef drawn out with water at low heat, believed to carry the strength of the meat in a form the sick could absorb. The chemistry behind that faith came largely from Justus von Liebig, whose meat extract was commercialised in the 1860s and whose theories held that the soluble juices were the nourishing part. Later analysis showed the reverse: the protein stays largely in the discarded fibre, and beef tea is mostly water, salts and flavour. Setting it with gelatine, as here, produced something a patient could take cold in hot weather or swallow when broth was unwelcome, and the delicate seasoning white pepper rather than black, one clove, a single blade of mace reflects the period conviction that sickroom food should be bland to the point of transparency.