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Aspic Salad

A chilled salad composed of layers of chicken aspic jelly, salmon, cream, and seasonings served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Aspic Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the aspic jelly

  1. To make aspic jelly, add 2 ounces of dissolved gelatine to 3 pints of clear stock.

  2. Beat the whites and shells of 2 eggs and 1 yolk, then add to the stock.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the stock with 1 tablespoon of catsup, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, savory, thyme, marjoram, parsley, mace, cloves, white pepper, and salt.

  4. Set over low heat, stirring until it boils.

  5. Set aside to settle, then strain through a coarse cloth and let it jell.

Assemble and serve

  1. Set small glass moulds in a pan of crushed ice.

  2. Place half an olive and a ring of capers in the bottom of each mould.

  3. Pour in about 1 inch of chicken aspic jelly.

  4. Add a layer of thoroughly mixed salmon meat and cream.

  5. Pour another layer of chicken aspic jelly on top.

  6. Turn out on a lettuce leaf and serve with a teaspoon of mayonnaise dressing.

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. Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Olive + chickentop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Capers + salmontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites and shells
Clarify the stock, collecting cloudiness so the aspic becomes clear.
Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm, sliceable jelly once chilled.
Salmon meat
Forms the main filling, giving the salad its flavour and texture.
Cream
Adds richness and softness to the salmon layer.

The step that matters

Set the aspic over low heat and let it settle before straining. Heating gently and letting the mixture settle lets the egg whites bind impurities so the stock clears; boiling hard breaks up the clearing raft and leaves the jelly cloudy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, capers, chicken, salmon, meat, cream, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, capers, chicken, salmon, meat, cream, 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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