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Aspic Jelly

Aspic jelly is a gelatinous meat stock made with beef, egg whites, gelatin, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the minced beef and egg whites thoroughly.

  2. Add the mixture to the stock before it gets hot.

  3. Heat the stock until hot.

  4. Add the soaked gelatin.

  5. Boil for about five minutes.

  6. Strain the mixture.

  7. Stir in the vinegar, sherry, peppercorns, cloves, celery, salt, ground mace, and parsley.

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. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

  4. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Clarify the stock by coagulating and trapping fine particles as they heat.
Lean beef
Adds meaty flavor and, with the egg whites, helps collect impurities for a clear result.
Gelatin
Sets the cooled stock into a firm, wobbly jelly.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a mellow, slightly sweet flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the stock.

The step that matters

Add the beef and egg white mixture before the stock gets hot. If the egg whites are added to hot stock they can cook and scatter into small pieces rather than forming a raft that clarifies the liquid. Adding them to cool stock lets them bind impurities and a clear aspic form when strained.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, gelatin, vinegar, sherry, clove, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, gelatin, vinegar, sherry, clove, celery. 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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