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Ox Feet Jelly
1086. To three ox fect, made into very stiff stock, allow two pounds and a half of brown sugar, the juice of six lemons, a bottle of table-beer, seven eggs (yolks and whites), a few cloves, about one quarter of an ounce of isinglass, and a tea-cupful of vinegar. Boil all these ingredients together a quarter of an hour; take the pan off the fire, and let it stand on the fender for five minutes before putting it through the jelly-bag.
WINE JELLIES (MADE WITH GELATINE). 1087. Put full three-quarters of an ounce of gelatine in a pint of water the night before making the jelly, with a bit of lemon peel and twelve ounces of sugar; squeeze in a pint measure the juice of four lemons, add a glass and a half of brandy, some orange flavouring or spirit of punch, fill up with good raisin-wine, and whites and yolks of two eggs beaten; boil gently till the scum separates, and pass through a jelly-bag.
LEMON JELLY (most excellent) 1088. Pare very thin the rind of two lemons, put it into a cup, and
A Victorian clarified jelly built on the gelatine that comes naturally from long-simmered ox feet, sweetened, soured and cleared with egg. Nothing here is dangerous, but almost every component needs translating.
- The hinge: the stock must set hard cold"very stiff stock" means three ox feet, split, simmered for several hours and strained, then chilled overnight so the fat lifts off in a cake and the jelly beneath is rubbery, not merely thick. If a spoonful chilled on a saucer does not hold a clean edge, reduce further before you begin; the quarter-ounce of isinglass will help the set, but it will not rescue a badly weak base.
- How much liquid this makesThe recipe gives no yield, but between the stock from three ox feet, a bottle of beer, the juice of six lemons and a teacupful of vinegar this is plainly a banquet quantity by modern standards; a quarter of the recipe is more realistic for a household.
- Table-beerA weak, lightly hopped small beer, brewed from a later running of the mash and drunk all day as an ordinary beverage; strengths varied but were low, of the order of a few per cent at most. A bottle is roughly a pint. The nearest modern stand-in is a mild low-alcohol English bitter; anything strongly hopped will turn the jelly bitter.
- IsinglassDried sturgeon swim-bladder, used as a setting and clarifying agent. A quarter ounce is about 7 g. It is still sold for brewing but is not a kitchen item; leaf gelatine will do the setting work in its place, though the quantities are not simply interchangeable and it does not clarify in the same way.
- Clearing with whole eggsThe seven eggs, yolks and whites together, are the clarification. Whisk them into the cold or barely warm liquid before it goes near the heat, then bring it up slowly without stirring once the raft forms. Adding eggs to hot liquid gives you scrambled egg suspended in cloudy jelly.
- The quarter-hour boilFifteen minutes at a full rolling boil will break the raft apart. Aim for a bare tremble at the surface for that time, which is long enough to coagulate the egg thoroughly and drive off some of the beer's rawness.
- "Stand on the fender"The fender was the iron kerb round an open hearth, a warm spot off the direct fire. The point is simply to let the pan settle for five minutes so the egg raft consolidates before straining; a turned-off burner does the same.
- The jelly-bagA conical flannel bag, scalded first, hung and left to drip without squeezing. A double layer of damp muslin in a sieve works. Pour the first cloudy runnings back through once; after that, leave it alone, as pressing forces sediment through and the jelly clouds.
- Sweetness and acidTwo and a half pounds of brown sugar against the juice of six lemons and a teacup (about 5 fl oz) of vinegar is a sharply sweet-sour balance calibrated to Victorian palates. Taste the liquid before the eggs go in and adjust then, since you cannot correct it once it is clearing.
Foot jellies were the backbone of nineteenth-century English confectionery and of invalid cookery alike: calf's foot was the genteel choice, ox foot the cheaper and more strongly flavoured one, and both were valued because they gave a firm, brilliant set at a time when refined gelatine was expensive and inconsistent. The elaborate clarifying with whole eggs and the straining through flannel existed to turn a frankly meaty broth into something clear enough to mould, glaze and light from behind on a dinner table. That the sweetening here is brown sugar and the liquor table-beer rather than sherry or raisin-wine places this among the plainer household versions; the neighbouring entries in the same book, made with bought gelatine and brandy, show the transition already under way, as commercial gelatine steadily displaced the all-day boiling of feet in ordinary kitchens.