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Aspic Jelly

Aspic jelly is a gelatinous dish made from stock, gelatin, egg white, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the aspic

  1. Combine soaked gelatine with stock, onion, cloves, peppercorns, celery, and salt in a pot.

  2. Beat the egg white with 1 tablespoon of the cold stock and add to the mixture.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer.

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. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate when heated, trapping particles and clarifying the stock.
Clear stock
Forms the body and flavour of the aspic once it has set.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. Boiling vigorously breaks up the egg white raft and makes the aspic cloudy. A gentle simmer lets the raft form and rise, carrying impurities up so the jelly stays clear.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, onion, celery. 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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