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Salmon in Aspic Jelly

Salmon in aspic jelly is a chilled dish of cooked salmon layered with aspic jelly and garnished with cucumber and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,067 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmon in Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Boil or steam the salmon until cooked, then let it cool completely.

Coat in aspic

  1. Pour melted aspic jelly over the salmon and let it set.

  2. Repeat this process three to four times, allowing each layer of jelly to set before adding the next.

Garnish and serve

  1. Place the salmon on a serving dish and garnish with slices of cucumber and lemon.

  2. Add small heaps of chopped pink jelly around the salmon.

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. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Salmon + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the cooked fish.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gelatin layer that encases the salmon and gives it a glossy, firm coating.

The step that matters

Let each aspic layer set before adding the next. If a layer is still liquid when more jelly is poured on, the layers can mix and blur instead of forming distinct, firm coats. Gelatin sets when cool, so each layer needs time to firm up first.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, cucumber):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Pumpkinfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, cucumber. 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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