Skip to main content
Main

Shrimps in Aspic Very Ornamental

A chilled aspic dish of shrimp arranged in wine glasses, garnished with lettuce, parsley or watercress, and an edible flower.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Shrimps in Aspic Very Ornamental

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the glasses

  1. Prepare slender conical-shaped wine glasses for each guest.

  2. Pour a spoonful of well-flavored aspic jelly into each glass, coating the sides.

Layer and set

  1. Arrange shrimps in order on the jelly and let it set in a cold place.

  2. Add a teaspoon of green chopped lettuce, moistened with salad dressing, into each cavity.

  3. Place additional shrimp dipped in jelly on the upper rows using a fork.

  4. Fill the glasses with chopped lettuce and top with aspic jelly, almost set.

  5. If the weather is warm, place the glasses in ice water to keep them level while the jelly solidifies.

Serve

  1. To serve, wipe the outside of the glasses with a towel dipped in hot water, turn out, and garnish with parsley or watercress and an edible flower.

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. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Shrimp + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Shrimp + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,723 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear, firm gel that holds the shrimp and lettuce in shape.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein and are arranged visibly in the set jelly.
Green chopped lettuce
Adds crisp texture and bulk inside the glasses beneath the jelly.
Salad dressing
Moistens the lettuce, adding flavor and a little fat.

The step that matters

Letting the jelly set before adding the lettuce and shrimp layers. Aspic must be partly set so the shrimp stay where arranged and the layers do not mix. Pouring onto jelly that is too warm or too soft lets pieces shift, while jelly that is too firm will not bond between layers.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, lettuce. 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.

You might also like

Creamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes