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Quick Aspic Jelly

A gelatinized meat stock made from ham, vegetables, and gelatin, set into a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Quick Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the aspic

  1. Simmer the ham, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, bay leaf, mushrooms, and red pepper in 3 cups of cold water for about 1 hour.

  2. Add salt to taste, beef extract, Kitchen Bouquet, and softened gelatine; stir thoroughly.

  3. Strain the mixture through double cheesecloth.

Set and serve

  1. Mould the liquid in a shallow pan and let it set.

  2. Cut into squares or diamonds and use as a garnish for cold meat or salad.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the strained liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly once chilled.
Lean raw ham
Adds meaty flavour to the stock as it simmers.
Beef extract
Deepens the savoury, beefy flavour of the clear liquid.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through double cheesecloth. Straining removes solids and fine particles so the liquid sets clear and smooth rather than cloudy or gritty. Double layers catch the finest sediment that a single layer would let through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, celery, parsley, mushroom, pepper, beef):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, celery, parsley, mushroom, pepper, beef. 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.

More aspic recipes

Chicken 77Meat 26Tomato 25Jelly 16Lobster 14Beef 10 See all 167 →

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