Already in the “Kitab al-Tabikh”, Arabic cookbook of the Xe century, and The Meatman de Taillevent (collection of French cuisine dating from the 14the century), we find the use of dishes frozen in a translucent material obtained by cooking connective tissues and bones. The XIXe and XXe centuries will be very fond of it, as evidenced by the variety of complex molds used on occasion, in metal, ceramic, glass or plastic like those of Tupperware, conducive to delirious recipes of jelly cakes.
But at the dawn of the 1990s, when molecular cuisine took hold of agar-agar and explored this seaweed-based product, prized in Japan since the 15e century, chicken in galantine, parsley ham and aspic of scallops desert the covered tables. It will take the bistronomic movement to put the pie back at the heart of the menu.
“My relationship with jelly has evolved, recognizes chef Bertrand Grébaut. At hotel school, it’s part of the classic baggage, with hurried starters, terrines… I loved it, I hated it, and today it’s come back into my practices thanks to more natural products, gelatin organic animal, agar-agar, pectin. » In his Michelin-starred restaurant, Septime, he favors soft, melting jellies, such as this recipe for raw Normandy beef, rose mayonnaise, fermented currants and tomato jelly with saffron.
Tatiana Levha, chef and co-founder of Le Servan, a Parisian bistro with Asian influences, regularly revisits the egg jelly, taken in a dashi broth with seaweed. She enjoys working gelatin with seafood, like the Japanese chef Daï Shinozuka, at the helm of Les Enfants Rouges, in Paris, who cooks salmon confit in spicy poultry jelly.
Alongside this modernized approach to traditional gastronomy, the aspic stands out in a more experimental and sexy form, in dinners and buffets imagined by culinary creators. Colored jelly pieces like raw gems, mini jelly cakes strange… “My inspirations in this area are mainly drawn from my childhood, testifies the Franco-Japanese Marie Méon, at the head of the Manger Manger agency, but also designers such as Shiro Kuramata and his work on transparencies, his Plexiglas furniture with inclusions of roses and feathers. »
Inspired by glass sulphides, pastry chef Andrea Sham imprisons flowers in crystalline half-spheres or, conversely, plays on the opacity of gelatin with astonishing black and white fish in coffee or milk jelly. For private events or during residences, the cook Laszlo Badet, ex-couture of the Chanel workshops, oscillates between reinterpretations of classics and diversions: here, on a bed of herbal gelatin sits an aspic of peas in the shape of a dome in the heart in beetroot jelly; there a milk jelly in the shape of a perfect braid. The chef of Italian and Swiss origins grew up in the canton of Vaud (Lausanne). “I was fed on the couch”, she confides. Either a slice of bread with mimosa egg and asparagus, all covered with jelly.