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Vegetable Salad with Aspic Jelly, Italian Style

A chilled vegetable salad of potatoes, beets, flounder, anchovies, capers, olives, and egg whites, bound with mayonnaise and aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad with Aspic Jelly, Italian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut out 12 small potatoes with a round cutter and slice the potatoes finely.

  2. Slice 2 pickled beets in the same way and place the sliced beets in separate bowls.

  3. Season both the potatoes and beets with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.

Cook the flounder

  1. Scrape off the skin of 1-2 flounder fillets and place the skinned fillets in a buttered flat saucepan.

  2. Season the fillets with salt and pepper, add white wine, and cook until done and keep them white.

  3. Place the cooked flounders on a platter to cool, then cut the cooled flounders into scallops.

Assemble and set

  1. Add an equal quantity of boned anchovies and season the anchovies with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flounders, anchovies, drained potatoes, beets, capers, and a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise dressing, then mix the mixture gently.

  3. Fill the center of a mold with the mixture, smooth the top evenly, and set the mold in a cool place until ready to serve.

  4. Garnish with chopped hard boiled egg whites and garnish with aspic jelly before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Potato + caperstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the firm, sliced body of the salad that holds its shape in the mold.
Pickled beets
Add tangy acidity and a deep color to the vegetable layers.
Flounder fillets
Provide the delicate fish base that flakes into the salad when cooked gently.
Boned anchovies
Add a salty, savory depth that seasons the fish and salad mixture.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gelatin coating that holds the mold together and adds a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Cooking the flounder until done but still white. Overcooked fish becomes dry and tough and turns grey, so it should be cooked gently just until it flakes and stays pale, then cooled before cutting into scallops.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, olive, vinegar, white wine, capers, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, olive, vinegar, white wine, capers, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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