No. 94

To Prepare Gelatine from Calf's Feet

Pour Preparer la Colle de Pieds de Veau

Calf's feet gelatine is more especially used for preparing jelly and gelatineous sweet dishes. Soak seven or eight very fresh calve's feet, split in two, having the bones all extracted, put them into a small soup-pot with water and let the liquid boil for ten minutes; then drain it off, also the feet; cool these off and return them to the clean soup-pot with two spoonfuls of sugar, the juice of four lemons, and half a bottleful of white wine. Cover with water, then heat the liquid while skimming, and at the first boil set it on the stove to obtain a regular and continuous ebullition for four to five hours, strain the liquid into a bowl and let it get very cold. When the gelatine is firm, remove all the fat from the top, then wash the surface with warm water so that not a vestige of grease remains. Lift out the jelly without disturbing the sediment at the bottom of the bowl, and put it back, either all or part into a saucepan to melt.

For one quart of gelatine, mix in three quarter of a pound of broken sugar and the juice of four lemons; when the sugar is dissolved, test the consistency so as to rectify it if necessary, by adding either more water or more gelatine, according to its strength or weakness. Beat four egg-whites without getting them frothy, put these into one gill of cold water and pour it over the dissolved gelatine, place the saucepan on a moderate fire, beat the liquid slowly till it is about reaching boiling point, then remove the saucepan to a slower fire, so that the liquid quivers, but does not boil; now add the juice of four lemons, cover the saucepan and keep it near the boiling point for thirty minutes, the gelatine should now be limpid. Filter it through a bag or strain it through a napkin fastened to the four feet of a filtering stool (Fig. 51) and pour it back into the filter until it becomes perfectly clear; this operation must be performed in a very warm place.

← No. 93 Different Forcemeats for Ravioles of Beef, C Elementary Methods No. 95 To Prepare Pig's Skin Gelatine →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a from-scratch aspic base: collagen extracted from calf's feet, clarified with egg white into a clear sweet jelly. It works, but it is a full day's project that a box of leaf gelatine replaces in five minutes.

The hinge: never let the clarification boilOnce the egg whites go in, the liquid must reach a quiver and stay there. A rolling boil shreds the coagulated raft and drives the cloudy particles back through the jelly, and no amount of filtering afterwards will recover it.
Calf's feetSold by halal and Caribbean butchers and some Italian shops, usually already split; ask for them boned or bone them yourself. Seven or eight feet is a large quantity. Halving or quartering the batch changes nothing but the pot size.
The blanching step is not optionalThe ten-minute boil and drain removes scum and off-flavours. Skipping it gives a jelly that tastes faintly of stockyard no matter how much lemon goes in.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. It is the water the egg whites are loosened into before they meet the hot gelatine.
"Broken sugar"Loaf sugar cracked into lumps, which dissolved cleanly and was reckoned purer than the grocer's coarse sugar. Ordinary granulated sugar is the modern equivalent, weighed the same: 12 oz per quart of gelatine.
Testing the consistencyChill a spoonful on ice for a minute or two. If it sets to a firm but trembling jelly it is right; slack means reduce further or add more jelly, rubbery means dilute with water.
The lemon juice appears three timesFour lemons at the long simmer, then four more with the sugar and four again during clarification; those last two lots are measured against each quart of gelatine, not against the whole batch. The acid is thought to help break down the collagen, and it keeps the finished jelly from tasting flat.
DegreasingThe warm-water wash of the chilled surface matters more than it sounds. Any fat left behind will bead visibly on a moulded jelly and cloud the filtered liquid.
FilteringA jelly bag on a stand, or a doubled napkin tied over a bowl, both scalded first. Work in a warm room and pour the first cloudy run back through: the raft caught in the cloth is what does the polishing.
KeepingSet the finished jelly cold and use it within three or four days, or freeze it. It is an unsalted, sugary stock and spoils about as fast as fresh broth.

A Little History

Before commercial gelatine was cheap and reliable, clear jelly was a display of a kitchen's competence: it took a day, cost a butcher's bill in feet, and any lapse showed instantly as cloudiness on the table. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, placed this among the Elementary Methods because everything else in the sweet-jelly repertoire — the moulded macédoines, the Bavarian creams, the aspic coatings — depended on it. Packaged granulated gelatine was already available in America by this date (Charles Knox began selling it in the 1890s), but a house of Delmonico's standing still made its own, and Ranhofer follows this entry with a pig's skin version. The clarification with egg white is the same trick used for consommé, and the pouring of the liquid back through its own raft until it runs clear is a technique that has not changed at all.