Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbam here. If you've never eaten Aspect, perhaps you've
Speaker 1: seen pictures of them, clear gelatine molds encasing savory ingredients
Speaker 1: in decorative designs. You might have layers of vegetables, perhaps
Speaker 1: carved into geometric or floral shapes, slices of hard boiled egg,
Speaker 1: or pieces of cooked meat, or even whole small fish
Speaker 1: swimming through the transparent, wobbly savory jelly. For the article,
Speaker 1: this episode is based on how Stuff Work. Spoke with
Speaker 1: Hannah Sellinger, a food writer and graduate of the International
Speaker 1: Culinary Center. She said, irrespective of what Aspect actually tastes like,
Speaker 1: and it's not for everyone, there's something incredibly compelling about
Speaker 1: that jiggle. It's a food for voyeurs. So yes, Aspect
Speaker 1: is usually a savory jello mole, a sort of cold
Speaker 1: gelatin based salad. Gelatin itself is flavorless. It's just a
Speaker 1: type of protein that comes in these long, twisty chains
Speaker 1: and is really good at linking up with other gelatine
Speaker 1: chains and with molecules of water. However, any flavors or
Speaker 1: colors that are in that water will come along for
Speaker 1: the ride. Traditionally, you don't make aspect with pure storbot gelatin. Rather,
Speaker 1: you make your own by preparing a clear stok, meaning
Speaker 1: you simmer the skin, tendons, and bones of beef, poultry,
Speaker 1: or fish in water until the collagen in them breaks
Speaker 1: down into gelatin. Collagen is a connective protein in and
Speaker 1: around animal cells that gives them their flexible structure. It's
Speaker 1: especially prevalent in the above tissues. When you boil these
Speaker 1: tissues in water, the collagen inside them untwines, leaving you
Speaker 1: with gelatin molecules and some meaty flavor from whatever protein
Speaker 1: you used. Four aspects. Stock is clarified to make it
Speaker 1: as translucent and colorless as possible. This clear stock is
Speaker 1: sometimes called by the French term consummee. When it's warm,
Speaker 1: it's soup. But the fun functional thing about gelatin molecules
Speaker 1: is that they'll stick together and solidify temperatures below about
Speaker 1: seventy seven degrees fahrenheit that's twenty five celsius, forming a gel.
Speaker 1: With any water and water soluble flavors that you've introduced.
Speaker 1: This gel can set so stiffly that you can suspend
Speaker 1: other foods. In it as it cools, and use molds
Speaker 1: to set it into fantastic shapes. But when you warm
Speaker 1: it up again to somewhere above ninety five degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or about thirty five celsius, it'll melt back to a liquid,
Speaker 1: meaning that it melts in your mouth. Aspect is a solid,
Speaker 1: decorative soup. Celinger said. Obviously, aspec has spurred passionate defense.
Speaker 1: Over the course of culinary history, gelatin is as a
Speaker 1: whole has gone through a lot of permutations. A chilled
Speaker 1: savory gelatin based dishes go back to at least the
Speaker 1: thirteen hundreds. Before industrial era innovations in cooking and refrigeration,
Speaker 1: these were seriously time consuming, difficult dishes to make, and
Speaker 1: Europe's upper classes showed off at feasts by presenting gels
Speaker 1: festooned with expensive spices and meats, a layered in different
Speaker 1: colors and decorated with gold leaf. During the medieval era,
Speaker 1: people also sometimes shaved down deer antlers to make hartshorn gelatine,
Speaker 1: or made a type of gelling agent called eiesenglass from
Speaker 1: the swim bladders of certain types of fish. By the
Speaker 1: mid sixteen hundreds, people in Japan and Ireland had developed
Speaker 1: the seaweed derived gelling products agar and karagenin, which are
Speaker 1: still used as vegetarian alternatives today. Around this time people
Speaker 1: started experimenting with sweet gelatin dishes too, but that's a
Speaker 1: different episode. Aspic went in and out of fashion over
Speaker 1: the centuries. Its true heyday may have been in the
Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen hundreds, when improvements in technique and technology
Speaker 1: allowed for wealthy households to present show stopping centerpieces a
Speaker 1: picture whole pigeons roasted with sprigs of myrtle stuck in
Speaker 1: their beaks, encased in clear gelatine, or a gelatin fish
Speaker 1: pond made with large and small colored gelatin fishes in
Speaker 1: clear gelatin, or a hen's nest made with shreaded lemon
Speaker 1: peel set in gelatin, filled with gelatin eggs molded in
Speaker 1: real eggshells, or with molded gelatin chickens. By the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, inexpensive instant gelatine sold in packets brought the
Speaker 1: magic of aspect to the masses, where it remained popular
Speaker 1: until the nineteen seventies. You could buy savory flavors from
Speaker 1: the brand Jello, like celery and Italian salad, Houstuffworks also
Speaker 1: spoke via email. Ken Albala, professor of history at the
Speaker 1: University of the Pacific INCA in California, an author of
Speaker 1: the book of the Great Gelatine Revival. He said, as
Speaker 1: often happens, the fashion started at the top socially and
Speaker 1: was imitated by those below until it went completely out
Speaker 1: of fashion and fine dining, which is where we are now.
Speaker 1: I do predict in my book that it will come
Speaker 1: back again. Aspect does differ around the world, both in
Speaker 1: taste and popularity. It's still pretty common in Eastern Europe
Speaker 1: and Germany, especially with cold meat aspect and head cheese,
Speaker 1: though Allballa says it's not very prevalent in Western Europe
Speaker 1: or North America anymore a quote, except of course, in
Speaker 1: home cooking and for intrepid cooks on the borders who
Speaker 1: like doing strange things. As Sellinger says, she thinks there's
Speaker 1: a certain appeal to aspect that has more to do
Speaker 1: with a retro enthusiasm and how it looks, not how
Speaker 1: it tastes, because aspect can taste like whatever you want
Speaker 1: it to. If you made your aspect from meat, it
Speaker 1: will have a meaty flavor. If you make it from
Speaker 1: unflavored gelatine. You can add whatever you like, celery, tomato, cream, mayonnaise,
Speaker 1: and either way you'll also be adding flavor with whatever
Speaker 1: foods you can jeel into the aspect, anything from meats
Speaker 1: to vegetables, to fruit to eggs. You can work in layers,
Speaker 1: filling a mold with a bit of gelatin and a
Speaker 1: few ingredients, letting it set, and then adding another bit
Speaker 1: of gelatin and stuff to the mold. To serve, it's
Speaker 1: usually sliced or scooped out with a serving spoon. Aspec
Speaker 1: is also used to coat and glaze foods such as
Speaker 1: cold meats and fish, eggs, poached or roasted poultry, and vegetables.
Speaker 1: A plain aspect, chopped or cut into shapes, is also
Speaker 1: used to garnish cold dishes. The two most common uses
Speaker 1: of aspect today are likely as toppings for treens and patis,
Speaker 1: which are made from fine ground meat and sort of
Speaker 1: like a small chilled meat loaf. But perhaps the most
Speaker 1: entertaining thing about aspec in these are modern times are
Speaker 1: the online communities dedicated to its jiggly consistency. While working
Speaker 1: on his Aspect book, Albalis says it was a and
Speaker 1: I quote perverse aberration that for about a year or more,
Speaker 1: I made an aspect almost every day, became obsessed with it,
Speaker 1: and then stopped completely when I finished writing the book.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun, though a great technical
Speaker 1: and gastronomic challenge, mostly for the entertainment of a Facebook
Speaker 1: group called show Me Your Aspects that apparently adored what
Speaker 1: I was doing. There are, in fact, many online communities
Speaker 1: devoted to aspect. If you're on Facebook, I personally recommend
Speaker 1: aspects with threatening auras, which I think is self explanatory.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article aspect There's just
Speaker 1: something about that jiggle on how Stuffworks dot Com, written
Speaker 1: by Katie Sprattlejoyce a brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and it's produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. The four more podcasts from my Heart
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