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Aspic Jelly

A gelatinous savory dish made from simmered onion, carrot, herbs, and beef extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. In a pot, combine the onion, carrot, bay leaf, cloves, celery seed, and peppercorns.

  2. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil slowly; boil for 5 minutes.

Make the aspic

  1. Add the beef extract and soaked gelatine, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Strain the mixture and stir in the lemon juice, salt, and red pepper.

  3. Pour into a mold and let cool.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Beef extract
Adds concentrated savoury beef flavour to the clear liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the savoury liquid.

The step that matters

Add the soaked gelatine and stir until fully dissolved. Undissolved gelatine leaves grains or cloudy patches and will not set evenly. Gelatine must be fully dissolved in warm liquid, not boiling, before the mixture cools and sets.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, celery, beef, lemon, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, celery, beef, lemon, pepper. 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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