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Potato Salad, with Aspio Jelly, Chartreuse

A chilled potato salad assembled in a mold with aspic jelly, capers, olives, and sliced beef tongue, finished with a mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potato Salad, with Aspio Jelly, Chartreuse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until thoroughly cooked, then cool them.

  2. Trim the potatoes into pieces about 1 to 1½ inches thick and cut them with a round cutter.

  3. Place the pieces on a napkin and prepare a pan with broken ice.

Line and build the mould

  1. Line a mould with Aspic jelly.

  2. Decorate the bottom of the mould with the whites of hard boiled eggs, capers, and olives in a rosette shape.

  3. Dip the potato pieces in Aspic jelly.

  4. Arrange the potato pieces closely around the inside of the mould to form a solid wall.

  5. Line the inside again with Aspic jelly to fill the gaps.

  6. Slice hard boiled eggs and place them over the rosette in the mould.

  7. Add thin slices of beef tongue and some capers on top of the eggs.

  8. Pour a little Aspic jelly over the layers to keep them firm.

Make the filling

  1. Cut cold boiled potatoes into thin square pieces and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Add the sardines and a few capers to the potatoes.

  3. Make a mayonnaise dressing with Aspic jelly and season it well.

  4. Quickly mix the dressing with the potatoes before it hardens.

  5. Fill the mould with the mixture.

  6. Smooth the surface evenly.

  7. Keep the mould in a cool place until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. To serve, dip the mould in lukewarm water, dry it, turn it over on a dish, and carefully remove the mould.

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 + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + caperstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,220 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the firm, bulky body that holds the salad's shape and texture.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gel that holds the pieces together and keeps the layers firm.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and richness, binding the potato pieces with a creamy coating.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm texture and mild richness, and decorate the layers.
Sardines
Add savoury, oily flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Quickly mix the dressing with the potatoes before it hardens. Aspic gels as it cools, so once it sets it can no longer coat the potatoes evenly. Mixing promptly keeps the dressing spreadable so the filling binds well and does not leave lumps of set jelly.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, olive, beef):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, olive, beef. 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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