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To Mould in Aspic Jelly

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and meat work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 527 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Mould in Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pack the mould in a pan of broken ice to keep it firm and straight.

  2. Pour a little aspic jelly into the mould and let it set until firm.

  3. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs, vegetables, macaroni, nuts, olives, pickles, and truffles, securing each piece with a few drops of jelly.

  4. Once the garnish is hard, add more jelly to cover it.

  5. Carefully place your choice of meat, game, or fish in the center and pour in more jelly to hold it.

  6. When that layer is hard, fill the mould with the remaining jelly.

  7. To decorate the sides, dip the ornaments in jelly and place them on the sides after the mould is very cold.

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. Truffle + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Olive + truffletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Nuts + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Nuts + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Olive + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, truffle, meat):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, truffle, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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