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Quick Aspic Jelly

A gelatinized stock made from simmered vegetables, Bovril, and sherry, set with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Quick Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine cold water, chopped carrot, celery, onion slice, parsley, and cloves in a saucepan.

  2. Add Bovril, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.

Set the jelly

  1. Soak gelatin in ½ cup water for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir the gelatin into the stock.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, add sherry, and stir until gelatin dissolves.

  4. Strain through a double cloth.

  5. For moulding, use immediately; for garnishing, pour into a shallow pan to set and color half with carmine.

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

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Provides the gel structure that makes the stock set into a jelly when cooled.
Bovril
Adds concentrated savory meaty flavor and color to the clear stock.
Sherry
Adds a light acidic, aromatic note to balance the savory stock.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine fully. Gelatine must dissolve completely in the warm stock; any undissolved granules will not set evenly and can leave a cloudy or lumpy jelly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley, clove, pepper, sherry):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, clove, pepper, sherry. 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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