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Strong Meat Jelly for Weak Persons
1213. Take about two pounds of lean beef, cut in pieces, with a hock of ham of the same weight, and a knuckle of veal of eight or ten pounds, a small quantity of salt and mace, without any other spice; cover it with water and stew seven hours. Strain, and when cold take off the fat; clear it with whites of eggs, and pass it through a jelly-bag. The produce of jelly from the above proportions should be about five quarts; to be taken warm or cold, as best suits the patient.
This is a clarified meat broth set with the natural gelatin of a veal knuckle — invalid cookery of the mid-nineteenth century, closer to a consommé than to anything sweet. The whole point is the veal bone, so do not substitute it away.
- Scale it downAs written this uses 12 to 14 lb of meat and bone and yields about five quarts. A quarter batch — 8 oz lean beef, 8 oz ham hock, and a 2 to 2 1/2 lb veal knuckle sawn in pieces — gives a little over a quart, which is a more sensible amount to keep.
- The veal knuckle is the setting agentNothing here is added to make it jell; the collagen in the knuckle joint does the work. Ask a butcher to saw it into two or three pieces so the marrow and cartilage are exposed. Beef shin with plenty of connective tissue is the nearest substitute.
- Heat level"Stew seven hours" means a bare simmer with the surface barely trembling, around 195°F. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquid and clouds the jelly beyond rescue, which defeats the clarifying step that follows.
- Salt and the hamA ham hock in the pot contributes a good deal of salt on its own, and the salt content of any given cure is unpredictable. Add only a pinch at the start and season at the end, after reduction has concentrated everything.
- MaceMace is the lacy outer coat of the nutmeg — warmer and less sharp than the seed. A blade or two is enough; ground mace will cloud the broth.
- Clearing with egg whitesWhisk the whites (and, if you like, the crushed shells) into the cold, degreased stock, then bring it up slowly without stirring. The coagulating white rises as a raft and traps the fine particles. Once the raft has formed, do not disturb it or the sediment goes straight back into suspension.
- Jelly-bagA cone of doubled muslin or a flannel bag hung over a bowl. Let it drip on its own; squeezing forces cloudiness through. Discard the first cloudy runnings back into the bag if necessary.
- Keeping itA clear, low-salt, high-protein jelly is an excellent growth medium. Chill it promptly in a shallow container, keep it covered in the refrigerator no more than three days, and freeze the rest in small portions. Reheat only what will be eaten.
- ServingTaken warm as a broth by the cupful, or turned out cold and cut in cubes. A squeeze of lemon or a little sherry in the warm version is a modern addition the original does not call for.
Restorative jellies and beef teas fill many pages of Victorian household books, and this one comes from a period when broth was the main thing a physician could offer a patient who could not manage solid food. Gelatin was widely believed to be nourishing in itself — the great French chemists had spent decades on the question of whether it could substitute for meat, and it was generally accepted in kitchens long after laboratories had begun to doubt it. What the jelly really supplied was salt, water, warmth and a little protein, which for a convalescent was not nothing. The insistence on "a small quantity of salt and mace, without any other spice" reflects the sickroom doctrine of the day: food for the invalid was to be bland, since spice was thought to inflame. The clarifying with egg white and the jelly-bag are pure high-kitchen technique borrowed for the sickroom, and the five-quart yield is a reminder that a household with a patient in it also had a cook, a large stockpot and a cold larder.