Skip to main content
Main

Aspic or Ornamental Savory Jelly

A clear savory jelly made from veal, ham, vegetables, herbs, and clarified with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Aspic or Ornamental Savory Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Place the ham in the bottom of a stew-pan.

  2. Add the veal and any poultry trimmings on top of the ham.

  3. Add the sliced carrots, onion, sweet herbs, cloves, sherry, salt, and white pepper.

  4. Pour in the cold water.

  5. Let it simmer gently for 4 hours, skimming off any scum.

  6. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into an earthen dish.

  7. Let it cool.

  8. Remove any fat that forms on the surface.

Clarify and strain

  1. Transfer the liquid to a clean stew-pan, leaving sediment behind.

  2. Add the egg whites to clarify.

  3. Stir over heat until the mixture is white.

  4. Let it stand until clear.

  5. Strain through a cloth or jelly-bag.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

  4. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Releases gelatin into the liquid as it simmers, helping the stock set firm when chilled.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the stock as it simmers slowly over several hours.
Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping cloudy particles so the stock becomes clear.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a aromatic depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg whites into the stock until white. Egg whites must be stirred in and heated gently so they coagulate and collect impurities; if the stock boils too hard or is not strained after, it stays cloudy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, carrot, onion, clove, sherry, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, carrot, onion, clove, sherry, 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.

More aspic recipes

Chicken 77Meat 26Tomato 25Jelly 16Lobster 14Beef 10 See all 167 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes