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To Ornament Aspics

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Ornament Aspics

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread chopped jelly along the edge of the dish.

  2. Create a border of croutons around the jelly.

  3. Top with small croutons of chopped jelly.

  4. Substitute a pound of fillets of poultry or game for the liver, adding 2 ounces of butter or reduced velouté or Spanish sauce.

  5. Use one or two colors for decoration, such as poultry pieces and truffles or red tongue.

  6. Cover the mold with no more than ⅓ inch of jelly before adding decorations.

  7. Mask the decorations with the same thickness of jelly.

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. Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + lobstertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

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