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Aspic Jelly

Aspic jelly is a gelatinous stock made from clear stock, gelatine, celery, peppercorns, onions, cloves, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1½ hours.

  2. Combine the soaked gelatine, clear stock, salt, celery, peppercorns, onions, and cloves in a pot.

  3. Beat the egg white with 1 tablespoon of cold stock and add to the mixture.

Clarify and set

  1. Heat the mixture until it begins to boil.

  2. Remove from heat and let it simmer for 25 minutes.

  3. Strain the jelly through a cloth into a mold.

  4. Set the mold in a cold place to harden.

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. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm jelly as it cools.
Clear stock
Forms the body and flavour of the jelly, amber if beef, white if chicken or veal.
Egg white
Gathers fine particles as it cooks, clarifying the jelly to a clear finish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the boil. Once the mixture boils, the egg white rises and clumps to trap cloudiness. Letting it boil hard can break up that raft and leave the jelly cloudy, so keep it at a gentle simmer.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, onion, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, onion, egg. 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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