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Stock for Aspic Jelly

A rich beef and veal stock flavored with bacon, vegetables, spices, and Worcestershire sauce, used as a base for aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stock for Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the bacon in a kettle.

  2. Brown the onions in the bacon fat.

  3. Add the beef in small pieces and brown it.

  4. Pour cold water over the meat and bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and cook slowly for 4 hours.

  6. Add the vegetables and simmer for another hour.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Beef
Browning builds savory depth, and long cooking releases its gelatin to set the stock.
Veal knuckle
Its collagen breaks down into gelatin, giving the stock body and the ability to set as aspic.
Bacon
Its fat carries flavor for browning the onions and beef, adding smokiness to the stock.
Onion
Browning in bacon fat develops sweetness and deep color for the stock.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and cook slowly. Boiling hard makes the stock cloudy and emulsifies fat into it, while gentle simmering lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin, which is what allows the stock to set.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

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