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Calves' Foot Jelly
4 calves' feet 4 qts. water, cold 3 egg whites and shells 2 in sticks cinnamon 1 cup sugar 1/2 box gelatine 1/2 cup cold water 2 lemons (juice) 1 pt. wine (non-alcoholic) Wash and split the feet, add the water and cook slowly until the flesh separates from the bone 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, gelatine, which has been soaked in 1/2 cup cold water 20 minutes, and the juice of the lemons. Stir until hot. Simmer 15 minutes. Add wine. Skim and strain through a fine cloth into tumblers. Makes 10 small glasses.
A sickroom standby that is really two techniques stacked: a long gelatin extraction from calves' feet, then an egg-white clarification. The clarification is where it succeeds or fails.
- The hinge: clarify gentlyWhisk the egg whites and crushed shells into the cold jelly stock, then bring it up slowly while stirring. Once it is hot and a raft has formed, stop stirring entirely and let it barely tremble for the 15 minutes; a real boil breaks the raft and drives the cloud back into the liquid, and no amount of straining will recover it.
- Buying the feetSplit calves' feet are a special order from a butcher and may come as cut sections rather than whole feet. Four feet is roughly 4-5 lb of bone and connective tissue. Scrub well and blanch them for five minutes before starting, discarding that water, or the finished jelly carries a barnyard note.
- The reductionFour quarts down to three pints is a reduction of better than half and takes four to six hours at a bare simmer, uncovered. Skim the grey scum in the first half hour. Boiling hard emulsifies the fat into the stock and you will never fully lift it off.
- "1/2 box gelatine"Boxes of granulated gelatine of this period commonly held about 1 oz, divided into four quarter-ounce papers, so half a box works out at roughly 2 modern envelopes (about 2 tablespoons, 1/2 oz) -- though box sizes varied between makers. Treat it as insurance: well-reduced foot stock sets firmly on its own, and if yours is already stiff when cold, use one envelope.
- "1 pt. wine (non-alcoholic)"Most likely unfermented grape juice, a common temperance substitute in invalid cookery of the period. A pint is a lot of sweet liquid against three pints of stock; taste before you add it all, and reduce the cup of sugar accordingly.
- StrainingLadle rather than pour, and let it drip through a doubled cloth or a jelly bag without squeezing. Pressing the cloth pushes fine sediment through and clouds the whole batch. Rinsing the cloth in hot water first keeps the jelly from congealing in the weave.
- Setting and yieldThree pints of stock plus a pint of wine is more than four pints of liquid, so ten glasses works out nearer 6 oz each, less what is lost to skimming and the simmer. Refrigerate 4 to 6 hours, or overnight; the surface may still need a final skim of fat once chilled, lifted off with a paper towel.
- KeepingThis is unsweetened-stock territory with no preservative beyond sugar and acid. Treat it as fresh food and use within three days, covered and cold.