Home › Recipes › Chicken Aspic Salad
Chicken Aspic Salad
Cold cooked chicken, aspic jelly, water cress, olives, mayonnaise dressing. Cut cold cooked chicken in neat pieces. Cover the bottom of a mould with the aspic jelly, put on ice and when hard add a layer of the chicken, which has been seasoned, and a little of the aspic to keep it in place, then add enough to cover it. Repeat till the mould is full. Garnish with water cress and olives. Serve with mayonnaise dressing.
Aspic Jelly for Salads.
Three pints of soup stock, one box of gelatine, one cupful of white wine and water, or water and lemon juice, whites and shells of two eggs. Soak the gelatine in the water and wine or water and lemon juice until soft. Add it to the soup stock--beef if for dark jelly, and veal or chicken if for light. Season highly, and mix the whites and shells of two eggs with the stock when cold. Cook all together until hot, stirring all the time. Let it boil till a thick scum has formed; remove it, and strain through a napkin.
A straightforward layered chicken aspic, with the jelly recipe attached. Nearly everything hinges on getting the gelatine ratio and the setting sequence right.
- "One box of gelatine"A box of granulated gelatine in this period was commonly 1 oz, equal to four modern ¼-oz envelopes, or roughly 3 tablespoons, though box sizes were not standard across brands. Against three pints of stock that should give a jelly firm enough to unmould and slice.
- Adjust for your stockA homemade stock rich in its own gelatine will set much harder than a commercial carton. If yours jellies solid in the refrigerator on its own, cut the added gelatine by a third; if it stays liquid, use the full amount.
- The clarification is the fiddly partThe egg whites and crushed shells must go in while the stock is cold, then be brought up slowly with constant stirring. Once the scum, or raft, forms, stop stirring, let it sit a minute, lift it off and pour through a damp cloth or several layers of cheesecloth without pressing. Squeezing forces the sediment back through and the jelly clouds.
- Season more than feels right"Season highly" is the instruction to obey. Cold gelatine dulls salt and acid noticeably, so taste the warm liquid at a level that seems slightly aggressive.
- Layering and timingEach layer needs to be nearly set before the next goes on, or the chicken drifts and the layers bleed. Figure 20 to 30 minutes chilling per layer, and use jelly that is cool and syrupy rather than hot when adding it to set pieces.
- Total chillingThe finished mould needs at least four hours, and overnight is better. To turn it out, dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert onto a chilled platter.
- YieldThree pints of jelly is a large quantity, enough for a 2-quart mould serving eight to ten, or several small individual moulds. The jelly keeps several days refrigerated and can be remelted gently.
- Wine and dressingA dry white wine or sherry works; the lemon juice version is a fair substitute and gives a brighter jelly. The mayonnaise served alongside would have been made by hand, and a homemade one thinned slightly with cream or lemon suits the dish better than a jarred version.
Moulded aspics of this kind were a fixture of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American entertaining, and a cookbook devoted entirely to ninety-nine salads is itself a sign of the era: the composed, chilled, decorated salad had become a course in its own right rather than a bowl of dressed greens. Commercial granulated gelatine is what made such dishes practical in an ordinary household, replacing the day-long business of boiling calves' feet for stock that would jelly. The word aspic comes into English from French, where the connection to the asp is usually explained as a reference to the mottled, snakeskin look of a clear jelly set with garnish inside it, though that etymology is traditional rather than settled. The instruction to use beef stock for dark jelly and veal or chicken for light reflects a kitchen that kept several stocks going at once and expected the cook to match the jelly to what it enclosed.