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Aspic Cream

A creamy tomato aspic made with cream, tomato puree, liquid aspic, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and tarragon work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 391 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Aspic Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stir together the cream, tomato puree, and liquid aspic in a bowl.

  2. Add tarragon vinegar to taste, being careful not to make it too acidic.

  3. Strain the mixture through a tammy (fine sieve) to remove any lumps.

  4. Use the aspic cream for masking or lining molds as it cools.

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. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + tarragontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the mixture.
Tomato puree
Provides concentrated tomato flavour and colour to the cream.
Liquid aspic
Sets as it cools, giving the cream a firm, gel-like coating.

The step that matters

Add tarragon vinegar to taste. Acid is easy to overdo and can sharpen the flavour too far while also affecting how well the gelatine-based aspic sets. Adding it gradually and tasting as you go keeps the balance right.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, tarragon, vinegar. 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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