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Aspic of Meat or Fowl

A gelatinous mold of seasoned lamb or fowl, filled with forcemeat and set in jelly, decorated with ham, cucumber, fowl breast, and omelets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cucumber are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,991 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Aspic of Meat or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Bone the shoulder of lamb or fowl and season the inside with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little beaten spice.

  2. Fill it with light forcemeat and sew it up.

  3. Blanch it.

  4. Braise it in broth until cooked.

Decorate and set

  1. Place it on a dish with the breast side down to keep it as white as possible.

  2. Decorate it with small slips of ham, pickled cucumber, breast of fowl, and white and yellow omelets of egg once the jelly in the mold is stiff.

  3. Set the decorations with a little jelly.

  4. Place the meat or poultry on top.

  5. Fill the mold with lukewarm jelly.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn it out like aspic of fish.

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. Pepper + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lamb + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together269 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder of lamb or fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked until tender in the braising broth.
Light forcemeat
Fills the boned meat, adding a soft, moist texture to the sliced centre.
Broth
Braises the meat and supplies the liquid that becomes the savoury base of the jelly.
Jelly
Sets around the meat and decorations, holding them in place and giving the aspic its firm body.

The step that matters

Decorate once the jelly is stiff. Decorations placed on jelly that is still liquid will sink or drift. Setting the first layer partly, then adding the slips, keeps them fixed in position.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, ham, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, ham, 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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