Skip to main content

Aspic Jelly. a Pretty Entree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly. a Pretty Entree.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare gelatin according to the package instructions, omitting sugar, lemon, wine, and spices.

  2. Flavor the gelatin with onion, shallot, parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt, boiling them in the mixture.

  3. Add tarragon vinegar after boiling.

  4. While the gelatin is still liquid, dip molds in cold water.

  5. Place decorative items like lettuce, shrimps, prawns, oysters, hard-boiled egg, capers, peas, carrot, calf’s head, chicken, or fish into the molds.

  6. Fill the molds with the liquid gelatin and let it set.

  7. Once set, carefully turn out the aspic and serve garnished with parsley and endive.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gelatin, shallot, parsley, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, shallot, parsley, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More aspic recipes

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

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes