aspic

thumb|upright|Aspic with chicken and eggs Aspic () or meat jelly is a savoury gelatin made with a meat stock or broth, set in a mold to encase other ingredients. These often include pieces of meat, seafood, vegetable, or eggs. Aspic is also sometimes referred to as aspic gelée or aspic jelly. In its simplest form, aspic is essentially a gelatinous version of conventional soup.

==History== Meat aspics were made before fruit- and vegetable-flavoured aspics. A poetic reference is given by the poet Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi, who described in the 9th century a gelled dish prepared with Iraqi carp, as "like ruby on the platter, set in a pearl ... steeped in saffron thus, like garnet it looks, vibrantly red, shimmering on silver". By the Middle Ages, cooks had discovered that a thickened meat broth could be made into a jelly. The Dongjing Meng Hua Lu mentioned two types of meat aspic in the restaurants of Kaifeng, the Northern Song dynasty capital: "Crystalline Meat" (水晶膾) and "Jiangchi" (薑豉).