Skip to main content
Main

Sardines En Aspic

Sardines en Aspic is a chilled dish of sardines set in a gelatinous consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sardines En Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Make the aspic

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in the required amount of water until fully dissolved.

  2. Add the lemon juice and consommé stock, then heat until very hot.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Arrange the sardines on a large flat plate or platter in rows, leaving about 1 inch between them.

  2. Pour the aspic mixture over the sardines and refrigerate until set.

  3. When ready to serve, carefully cut out each portion containing a sardine.

  4. Serve on a plate garnished with parsley and a slice of lemon, along with a small brown bread and butter sandwich.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid stock into a firm, wobbly aspic that holds the sardines in place.
Consommé stock
Provides the clear, savoury liquid that becomes the flavour of the aspic.
Imported sardines
Provide the rich, oily fish flavour that is the centrepiece of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the savoury flavour of the aspic.

The step that matters

Pour the aspic over the sardines and refrigerate until set. The aspic must be hot enough to pour but not so hot that it melts or clouds the setting layer, and it needs to chill fully. Gelatine only sets reliably once cooled, so the layer will stay soft and runny if it is not given enough time in the fridge.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes