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Aspic Jelly

Aspic jelly made from simmered fowl, beef, veal, vegetables, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the fowl, beef, and veal in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Simmer for 5 hours.

  3. Add the cloves, bay leaf, salt, onions, carrots, celery, turnips, and peppercorns, which have been browned in marrow or butter.

  4. Strain the stock, which should reduce to 2 quarts.

Clarify and set

  1. When cold, remove all fat and stir in the beaten whites of 2 eggs to clarify.

  2. Add the gelatine that has been softened in cold water.

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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Fowl
Releases savoury flavour and body into the long-simmered stock.
Beef shin
Its connective tissue adds body and rich flavour to the stock.
Veal knuckle
Its bones and connective tissue add depth and body to the stock.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.
Gelatine
Sets the clear stock into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Egg whites (in the method)
Coagulate and trap cloudy particles so they can be removed, clearing the stock.

The step that matters

Removing the fat before clarifying. Fat left in the cooled stock makes the jelly greasy and can keep the clarified stock cloudy. Chilling the stock lets the fat rise and solidify so it can be lifted off completely before the egg whites are stirred in.

Swap the clove

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

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

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