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Vegetables in Aspic

A chilled vegetable aspic composed of boiled artichokes, carrots, celery, beans, beetroot, turnips, peas, asparagus, and optional seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetables in Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil artichoke bottoms, carrots, celery, French beans, beetroot, turnips, peas, and asparagus in salted water until tender.

  2. Cut beetroot only after it has cooled to preserve its color.

Assemble the mold

  1. Line a Charlotte mold with aspic jelly.

  2. As the jelly sets, arrange the boiled vegetables in the mold, mixing colors attractively.

  3. Cover the vegetables with more aspic jelly and fill the center with the remaining vegetables, optionally mixed with seafood.

Unmold and garnish

  1. Turn out the mold and garnish with chopped aspic and blocks of green mayonnaise or tomato aspic.

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. Artichoke + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Artichoke + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Artichoke + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Aspic jelly
Sets around the vegetables, holding the arranged mold together and giving it a clear, firm body.
Artichoke bottoms
Provides a tender, firm base texture that holds its shape when the mold is turned out.
Beetroot
Adds a deep red color to the arrangement, which can fade if cut while still warm.
Green mayonnaise or sauce verte
Adds richness and fat to the dish and is used as a garnish for colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Cut beetroot only after it has cooled. Cutting beetroot while hot releases more of its pigment and juices, which can bleed and dull the colour of the vegetables set beside it in the mold.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, carrot, celery, beans, beetroot, turnip, asparagus):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, carrot, celery, beans, beetroot, turnip, asparagus. 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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