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Meat Jellies

A gelatin set of cooked veal or chicken, sweetened with sugar and flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,580 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Meat Jellies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cook the veal or chicken until tender and reduce the stock to about ½ cup.

Make the gelatine

  1. Measure the gelatine into a mixing bowl and add the cold water.

  2. Let it stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Heat water to boiling point and measure ½ cup.

  4. Add this to the soaked gelatine.

  5. Add the sugar, lemon juice, and rind to the gelatine mixture.

Set and unmould

  1. Once set and firm, dip the mold quickly into hot water, then turn it upside down onto a serving dish.

  2. Shake gently to release the mold.

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. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Veal + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

What each ingredient does

Veal or chicken
The reduced stock gives the aspic its meaty flavour and body.
Gelatine (in the method)
It sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
It adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
It adds acidity and brightness that lift the savoury meat flavour.

The step that matters

Dip the mold quickly in hot water. A brief dip melts only a thin layer of set gelatine at the surface, so the jelly slides out whole. Leaving it too long melts the edges and the shape collapses.

“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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