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Aspic Jelly From Packed Beef Tea

Aspic jelly made from packed beef tea, vegetables, gelatin, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 From Packed Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vegetables in 1½ quarts of water for about 1 hour.

  2. Add the beef tea, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the gelatin in 1 cup of water and add it to the beef tea.

  5. Pour the mixture into molds and set on ice to chill.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly gel once chilled.
Beef tea
Supplies the main savoury beef flavour of the aspic.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully before adding it. Gelatine must dissolve completely in warm liquid to set evenly; undissolved granules leave gritty spots and weak patches in the gel.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tea, clove, carrot, turnip, pepper, 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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