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Aspic Jelly

Aspic jelly is a gelatinous dish made from simmered vegetables, stock, gelatin, and chicken, served chilled with lettuce and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cook the carrot, onion, celery, parsley, bay leaf, clove, peppercorns, and lemon juice together for 10 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water and prepare the brown stock.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and kitchen bouquet.

  4. Beat the egg whites and add lemon juice, then stir into the mixture until it boils.

  5. Remove from heat and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain through cheesecloth and pour into a mold with a slice of hard-boiled egg at the bottom.

Set and serve

  1. Add cubes of chicken, olives, and red peppers to the jelly.

  2. Top with a slice of lemon and refrigerate until very cold.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise dressing.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Clarify the stock by trapping fine particles as they cook, leaving a clear jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm, sliceable jelly once chilled.
Brown stock
Provides the savory beef base that gives the aspic its flavor and color.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the savory jelly.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg whites into the boiling mixture. Egg whites must be added and stirred in before the mixture boils, so they can rise and collect impurities. If stirred in too late or left to boil hard, they can break up and leave the jelly cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley, clove, lemon, beef, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, clove, lemon, beef, pepper. 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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