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Aspic Jelly

A gelatinous savory stock made with stock, herbs, egg whites, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the aspic

  1. Gently beat the egg whites and add them to the warm stock along with salt and cayenne.

  2. Heat the mixture until it boils, then let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Cover and let it sit off the heat for 15 minutes to keep warm.

Clarify and strain

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine towel or table napkin that has been boiled.

  2. You may need to strain it two or three times, keeping it warm with a newspaper during the process.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping particles so the stock becomes clear.
Gelatine
Sets the stock as it cools, giving the aspic its firm, wobbly body.
Second brown stock
Forms the base liquid, supplying most of the flavour and body of the aspic.

The step that matters

Heating the egg white mixture to a boil. Egg whites must coagulate gradually as the liquid heats so they can collect impurities; stirring or boiling too hard breaks the raft and leaves the aspic cloudy.

“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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