Skip to main content
Main

Salad in Aspic Jelly

A chilled vegetable salad set in gelatinous stock aspic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad in Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  2. In a stewpan, combine stock, carrot, turnip, shallot, cloves, peppercorns, lemon, vinegar, herbs, egg white, and eggshells.

Clarify and strain

  1. Whisk over heat until boiling, then let it boil for a few minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let it settle for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

Set and garnish

  1. For garnish, color part of the jelly with cochineal if desired.

  2. Pour the jelly into a mold and refrigerate until set.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Egg white
Binds fine particles and clears the stock when it is heated and strained.
Stock
Forms the base of the jelly and supplies most of its flavor.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the clarified stock.

The step that matters

Simmering and settling the clarification mixture. Whisking to a boil and then letting the mixture settle undisturbed lets the egg white and eggshells trap cloudy particles that rise to the top. Stirring or rushing the strain can leave the jelly cloudy and murky.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, shallot, clove, vinegar, egg):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, shallot, clove, vinegar, egg. 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 aspic salad recipes

Tomato 10

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes