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Aspic Jelly

A gelatinous stock made from reduced broth, egg whites, and gelatin, served as a savory jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil stock with onion, celery, turnip, carrot, parsley, salt, and pepper until reduced to 1 quart.

  2. Strain the stock and remove fat.

  3. If the strained stock is not clear, whip egg whites with cold water, add to stock, and boil for a few minutes before straining again.

  4. Reduce the stock in an enamelled saucepan to 1 pint.

Make the aspic jelly

  1. Take ⅓ pint of stock for the aspic jelly and add garlic.

  2. Simmer to infuse flavor.

  3. If the jelly is not firm, add a little gelatin.

  4. For color, add toasted bread when the jelly is hot.

Serve

  1. Once set, cut the jelly with two forks and place it in the center of a silver dish for serving with chicken cutlets.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
They collect cloudy particles as they cook, clarifying the stock into a clear jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm jelly as it cools.
Stock
Provides the liquid and flavour that form the body of the jelly.

The step that matters

Clarifying the stock with egg whites. Egg white proteins trap cloudy particles as they coagulate, so the stock must be boiled gently after whisking in the whites. Vigorous boiling can break up the raft and leave the jelly cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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