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Aspic of Eggs

A gelatinous dish made with boiled eggs, vegetables, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Aspic of Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then remove the shells and slice 5 of them.

  2. Chop the whites of 2 remaining eggs and sieve the yolks.

  3. Slice the vegetables.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the sliced vegetables with the dissolved gelatine, herbs, spices, parsley, bay leaf, white wine, water, and vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture over the fire until a scum rises. Let it boil for a few minutes.

  3. Set aside for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain through a jelly bag until clear.

Set and serve

  1. Stand a mould in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the mould and coat with wet salt.

  3. Pour the jelly into the mould to a thickness of about ½ inch. Let it set.

  4. Garnish with tufts of the chopped egg whites and yolks.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Sliced whole eggs and chopped whites and yolks give the aspic its visible decoration and body.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the clear jelly.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stock-based jelly.
Carrot, turnip, celery and onion
Flavour the stock, giving the clarified jelly its savoury base.

The step that matters

Strain through a jelly bag until clear. Gelatine jelly turns cloudy if disturbed or pressed through the cloth too hard. Letting it drip slowly, after the scum has been removed by heating, keeps the aspic transparent.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, tarragon, vinegar. 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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