Skip to main content
Main

Aspic of Meat

Aspic of Meat is a gelatinous dish made by simmering various meats and vegetables, then setting the clarified broth with egg whites and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Aspic of Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine sliced onions and diced bacon in a stewpan.

  2. Add diced chicken, game, mutton, beef, calf's foot, bacon rind, parsley, thyme, garlic, halved carrots, clove, and whole onions.

  3. Pour in ½ pint of water and cover the pan.

  4. Cook over brisk heat.

  5. Once nearly cooked, ladle off excess grease.

  6. Add boiling water to cover the mixture.

  7. Finish cooking.

  8. Strain the juice and skim off any fat.

  9. Let it cool.

  10. If the juice is not clear, beat 2 egg whites and stir them into the juice in the stewpan.

  11. Heat for 10 minutes while stirring, then remove from heat.

  12. Add a few drops of lemon juice and strain again.

Set and unmold

  1. Pour a thin layer of the juice (about ⅛ inch) into a mold and place it on ice until it sets into a jelly.

  2. Arrange cooked, boneless meats on the jelly without touching the sides of the mold.

  3. Cover with the remaining juice to match the thickness of the bottom layer.

  4. Refrigerate until fully set into a jelly.

  5. To serve, dip the mold in warm water, invert onto a dish, and remove the mold.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites bind impurities and cloud particles, which rise and are strained out, clarifying the juice.
Calf's foot
Its collagen dissolves into gelatin during long simmering, giving the broth the body needed to set.
Bacon rind
Adds collagen-rich body and savory fat that enriches the jelly's flavor.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic depth into the stock as they cook.

The step that matters

Clarifying the juice with egg whites. Stirring in beaten egg whites and heating gently lets coagulating proteins trap cloudy particles. Straining afterward removes them, so skipping or boiling too hard leaves the aspic murky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, chicken, meat, mutton, beef, parsley, thyme):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, chicken, meat, mutton, beef, parsley, thyme. 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.

More meat aspic recipes

Savory 3 See all 26 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipes