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Chicken Aspic from the Stock
1 qt. steamed stock. 1 onion. 1 box Knox gelatin. 1/2 pt. water, cold. Cut onion in pieces, drop into stock, let stand or put on fire to season; salt and pepper to taste. Let gelatine soak in half pint cold water. Pour over this the hot strained stock. When nearly cold put into mold. Add to this the yolks of hard boiled eggs, or one or two whole eggs cut into pieces. Stuffed olives look pretty cut in rings through this aspic. This makes a pretty ring to serve the chicken salad in, and can be garnished with cucumber daisies on lettuce.
A savory gelatin ring built on the broth left from steaming a chicken, meant to be filled with chicken salad. The only real difficulty is the gelatin measurement, which no longer means what it did.
- The gelatin is the hingeKnox is sold today as a box of four envelopes of about 1/4 oz each, one envelope setting roughly a pint, but period boxes were not necessarily packed that way. Five cups of liquid with a full modern box would be rubbery; two envelopes give a sliceable ring, three if the mold is elaborate and must stand at room temperature. Since box sizes varied, treat the original figure as unreliable rather than authoritative.
- Steamed stockThe liquid collected under a steamed or poached fowl. Its body varies: if it already sets soft in the refrigerator, reduce the added gelatin accordingly. Canned broth has little body and will need more gelatin, at the upper end of the range above.
- Units1 qt is 4 cups; 1/2 pt is 1 cup. Total liquid is 5 cups, which fills a standard 6-cup ring mold.
- Seasoning by cold onion"Let stand or put on fire to season" means either a long cold steep or a brief simmer with the onion. Aspic tastes flat when cold, so season the hot stock more assertively than seems right; salt perception drops sharply at refrigerator temperature.
- Order of operationsSoften the gelatin in the cold water until it swells, then pour the strained hot stock over it and stir until fully dissolved with no granules on the spoon. Undissolved gelatin settles and gives a cloudy, weeping ring.
- Setting the garnish"When nearly cold" matters: the mixture must be syrupy before the egg and olive rings go in, or they float or sink. Easier still is to set a shallow layer first, arrange the olives on it, then add the rest.
- Chilling and unmoldingFour hours minimum, overnight is better. Dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled platter.
- Cucumber daisiesThin cucumber slices with the peel notched into petals, a standard cold-buffet flourish of the era. Yield is about eight servings as a salad base.
This recipe belongs to the era when the gelatin ring was the centerpiece of the American cold luncheon, and it shows the practical logic behind the fashion: the broth from a steamed fowl, which would otherwise be soup, becomes the dish that presents the bird's own meat. Granulated gelatin is what made this possible in ordinary kitchens. The insistence on prettiness — olive rings, egg yolk, cucumber daisies on lettuce — reflects a period when domestic-science writers treated visual arrangement as a skill on equal footing with cooking, and when the unmolded ring was the accepted way to make leftover chicken look like a course.