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Aspic Jelly
2 tablespoons granulated gelatine cup hot water 1 tablespoon lemon juice Boil consommé with lemon juice until reduced to one quart. Season well and clear. Soak gelatine in two tablespoons cold water and dissolve in hot water, add to clear consommé, strain, and use as a mold for fish, meats and salads. It is very necessary that the consommé be highly seasoned, as the success of the aspic depends on the flavor.
A savoury setting jelly rather than a sauce in the modern sense, used to line molds and to glaze cold fish and meat. The printed ingredient list has dropped its quantities in places, so read the method rather than the list.
- The missing quantitiesThe list gives "cup hot water" with the fraction dropped, and never states how much consomme to start with. The method fixes only two of the amounts: enough consomme to reduce down to one quart, and two tablespoons of cold water for the soak. The quantity of hot water for dissolving is simply lost; a small amount, enough to melt the bloomed gelatine, is all that is wanted.
- Gelatine strengthTwo tablespoons of granulated gelatine is six teaspoons, roughly two and a half to three modern envelopes, for one quart of liquid. That is a firm jelly that will unmold cleanly and hold cut shapes, not a soft spoonable one.
- Soak, then dissolveGranulated gelatine must swell in cold water for five minutes before it meets anything hot, or it clumps. Dissolve the bloomed gelatine in hot, not boiling, liquid; a hard boil weakens its setting power.
- "Clear" the consomméClearing means clarifying with beaten egg white and crushed shell, brought slowly to a bare simmer so the raft forms, then ladled off through a cloth-lined strainer without stirring. Aspic that is not clarified sets cloudy, and the whole point of the dish is transparency.
- Season harder than seems rightThe recipe's own warning is the hinge. Cold jelly reads far blander than the same liquid tasted hot, so season the consommé to the edge of too salty and too sharp while it is warm.
- Lemon juiceOne tablespoon in a quart is there for brightness and to cut the fattiness of the stock, not to set anything. Add it before the reduction as written, but taste after reducing, since the acidity concentrates too.
- Setting and yieldOne quart lines a large mold with plenty over for chopped garnish, or fills several individual molds. The recipe gives no chilling time; allow several hours, and test a spoonful on a cold saucer before committing the whole batch to a mold.
- Homemade stock helpsA consommé built from veal knuckle or calf's foot carries its own gelatine and sets more tenderly than boxed broth plus powder alone. If using commercial stock, expect a firmer, more rubbery result at this gelatine ratio.
Aspic belonged to the ambitious end of the late-nineteenth-century table, where cold dishes were judged on clarity and on the geometry of the garnish suspended inside them. It is often associated with the professional French kitchen, where it appears in cookery writing as early as the eighteenth century, and where reduced, clarified stock set with natural gelatine from bones and calves' feet was the standard finish for cold buffet work. What put it into a domestic book like this one was commercial granulated gelatine, which reached American groceries in the later nineteenth century and replaced a day of simmering hooves with a five-minute soak. That Lowney's, a chocolate company's promotional cookbook, includes an aspic at all shows how thoroughly the technique had migrated from the hotel kitchen into the ordinary household repertoire by the turn of the century.