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Aspic Jelly

Aspic jelly made from a simmered stock of fowl, beef, veal, vegetables, and clarified with egg whites, set with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the fowl, shin of beef, and knuckle of veal in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Simmer for five hours.

  3. An hour before finishing, add the cloves, bay leaf, salt, onions, carrots, celery, turnips, and peppercorns.

  4. Strain the stock, which should reduce to two quarts.

Clarify and set

  1. Once cooled, remove all fat from the surface.

  2. Whip the egg whites and stir them into the stock to clarify.

  3. Soften the gelatine in cold water, then add it to the clarified stock.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the cooled stock into a firm, wobbly jelly.
Beef shin
Releases collagen during long simmering, adding body and richness to the stock.
Veal knuckle
Its bones and connective tissue release collagen, giving the stock body that helps it set.

The step that matters

Clarifying the stock with egg whites. Whipped whites stirred into the stock trap fine particles as they cook and rise, which clears the liquid. Stirring too hard or letting the stock boil vigorously breaks up the raft, leaving the aspic cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, onion, carrot, celery, turnip, sherry):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, onion, carrot, celery, turnip, sherry. 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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