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Aspic or Savoury Jelly

A gelatinous dish made from reduced veal or chicken stock, lemon juice, egg whites, and crushed shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Aspic or Savoury Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the meat and break the bones into small pieces.

  2. Place them in a stewpan with a plate at the bottom to prevent burning.

  3. Add 6 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  4. Add cloves, bay leaf, onion, shallot, garlic, pepper, and salt.

  5. Simmer for 7-8 hours until reduced to a third of its original quantity.

  6. Strain off the jelly and fat, and let it cool completely.

Clarify and finish

  1. Remove all fat from the surface and wipe with a warm, damp cloth.

  2. Re-melt the jelly in a clean enamelled saucepan and squeeze in lemon juice.

  3. Beat in the slightly beaten egg whites and crushed shells.

  4. Heat to boiling, stirring continuously, and boil for 10 minutes.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 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

Meat
Provides the gelatin-rich body and savory flavor that form the jelly as it simmers.
Cow heels
Supply collagen that converts to gelatin, giving the stock its firm setting power.
Egg whites
Bind to cloudy particles as they heat, so they can be strained out for a clear jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps the clarified jelly taste fresh.

The step that matters

Heat to boiling while stirring continuously. Stirring keeps the egg whites and shells from settling and scorching on the base, and the rising egg white mass traps impurities so they can be filtered out, clearing the jelly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, shallot, garlic, pepper, lemon, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, shallot, garlic, pepper, lemon, 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.

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