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Savory Aspic

Savory aspic made with veal, ham, mushrooms, egg whites, beetroot, parsley, and aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 745 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Savory Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Set the decoration

  1. In a plain mold, pour a little aspic jelly to cover the bottom.

  2. Arrange small sprays of parsley, a piece of beetroot, and some chopped hard-boiled egg whites in a decorative shape in the jelly.

  3. Allow the jelly to set.

Fill and chill

  1. Fill the mold with the pieces of veal, ham, and mushrooms.

  2. Pour in nearly cold aspic jelly to fill the mold completely.

  3. Place the mold in the larder until ready to serve.

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. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  3. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked veal
Forms the main meaty body of the savory filling.
Cooked ham
Adds savory flavor and meaty substance to the filling.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gel that holds the filling and decoration together.
Preserved mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and soft texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Pour in nearly cold aspic jelly. If the jelly is too warm, it can melt the thin layer already set in the mold and disturb the decoration. If it is too cold, it may set unevenly or thicken before it fills the gaps around the meat.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, mushroom, egg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, mushroom, egg, parsley. 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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