Home › Recipes › Calf's Foot Jelly
Calf's Foot Jelly
Calves' feet make good jelly as does gelatine, it is only more brittle and liable to fall apart of its own weight. 4 feet will produce about a gallon of jelly. Set them on to boil in 3 gallons of water and keep them simmering at the back of the range till they are dissolved and the liquor is reduced to less than half, which may be in 8 or 10 hours. For further directions see the Book of Salads. When the calf's foot jelly has been divested of grease it is the same thing as gelatine and water and is ready to have sugar and other ingredients added to make stock jelly in the usual way.
This is not a finished dessert but a stock recipe: it makes the unsweetened gelatine base that other recipes in the book turn into wine jelly, fruit jelly and moulded creams. The whole procedure is one long, slow extraction followed by a thorough degreasing.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: keep it at a bare simmer -- the recipe has you set the feet on to boil, then "keep them simmering at the back of the range," i.e. the coolest part of a coal range, with barely a bubble breaking. A hard rolling boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquor and clouds the jelly, which then has to be clarified to rescue it.
- Yield and reductionFour feet in 3 gallons of water, reduced to under half, gives about a gallon of jelly stock. Expect 8-10 hours; a heavy stockpot on the lowest burner setting, or a low oven around 200F, does the same work with less watching.
- Sourcing the feetCalves' feet are a special order from a butcher rather than a supermarket item. They should come split lengthwise. Pig trotters give a comparable set and are far easier to find, though the flavour is heavier and needs more aggressive blanching first.
- DegreasingThe instruction to divest it of grease is not optional. Chill the strained liquor completely so the fat sets in a solid cap, lift it off, then wipe the surface with a cloth wrung out in hot water to take the last film.
- Testing the setChill a spoonful on a cold saucer; if it does not set firm within a few minutes in the refrigerator, reduce further. The recipe's remark that it is "more brittle and liable to fall apart of its own weight" is ambiguous as to whether it describes the foot jelly or the gelatine, but on either reading tall moulds are a poor choice.
- "For further directions see the Book of Salads"A cross-reference to another volume rather than a lost technique. What those directions contain is not stated here; the usual finishing steps for a jelly stock are clarifying and straining, which any modern consomme method covers.
- Substituting gelatineThe text says outright that the finished product is the same as gelatine and water. A gallon of medium-strength jelly stock is roughly matched by 4-5 oz of powdered gelatine bloomed in a gallon of liquid, though the foot version carries body and mouthfeel that powder does not.
- Keeping itAn unsweetened, unsalted meat gelatine is an excellent bacterial medium. Cool it quickly rather than letting it stand warm overnight, refrigerate at once, and use within three or four days, or freeze it in blocks.
Calf's foot jelly was one of the great invalid foods of the nineteenth century, prescribed for convalescents and new mothers on the theory that it was concentrated nourishment in an easily swallowed form, and it turns up in nursing manuals as well as in cookery books. Making it was a full day's labour for a kitchen with a coal range that stayed warm anyway, which is why the author can casually specify eight to ten hours at the back of the stove. Commercially prepared sheet and granulated gelatine had already begun displacing it in professional kitchens, and the opening line reads as a working pastry cook's verdict on the change: the old method still works, it sets more brittle, and the new product does the same job. In time the boiled foot had largely vanished from domestic cookery, surviving mainly in the aspics and brawns of butchery traditions where the feet were on hand regardless.