Name: Aspic Jelly
Ingredients: 30 pounds of fresh veal (shank); 4 hens; 18 calves' feet (boned and parboiled); 4 gallons of spring water

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

30 pounds of fresh veal (shank)
4 hens
18 calves' feet (boned and parboiled)
4 gallons of spring water

Directions

Prepare

Wash the veal in plenty of water.
Place the veal, hens, and parboiled calves' feet into a stock pot.
Fill the pot with spring water.

Cook

Set the pot on the stove and bring to a boil.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal shank: Provides collagen and gelatin that set the stock into a firm aspic when chilled.
Hens: Add rich meat flavor and additional gelatin-forming body to the stock.
Calves' feet: Are very rich in collagen, giving the liquid the gelatin needed to set.
Spring water: Forms the liquid base in which the collagen and meat flavor are extracted.

“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.