![]() Her custom three-dimensional jelly cakes look like giant dew drops, filled with edible flowers and pre-molded koi fish and swans - translucent and stunning. Like Albala, Siew Heng Boon's work comes up a lot in the former group. While there are hyper-specific sub-groups like Chickens Eating Aspics (which is exactly what it sounds like), there seem to be two main camps: people who view aspics and molded gelatin as genuine opportunities for creative culinary endeavors, and those who approach making them with kind of a wink. With that statement, Curran taps into one of the more unexpected features of online aspic culture. When I'd post them to my instagram, my friends would find them really funny." They're really more of an experiment, or an art piece. I've always hated Jell-O, to be honest. She continued: "I think like, four years ago I thought I'd try and make some of my own, and they almost never taste good. "We would just spend an evening looking at bad vintage recipes, and that really exposes you to the idea of elaborate gelatin dishes." "It was something my friends and I had in common in college," Curran said. Danielle Curran, a member of several aspic-themed Facebook groups, says she had always been fascinated by vintage foods, especially grotesque recipes like the "crab centipede." The fact that aspics are mildly repelling in person actually seems to be part of their online appeal - almost like a wrinkly, flat-faced dog or Adam Driver, they are so ugly they're cute. "And then they go completely, utterly out of fashion - so 'out' that people find them revolting now." "Then they come back with a vengeance in the middle of the century, especially when Jell-O becomes popular and it's very easy for anyone to do," Albala said. They became en vogue again in the 19th century as towering gelatin molds, and are out again in the early 20th century. "They were very fashionable in the late Middle Ages, then early Renaissance, then went out of fashion." "Aspics sort of regularly come in and out of fashion," Albala said. It's especially impressive considering that aspics (which are traditionally savory), Jell-O salads, and the like aren't currently a well-loved mainstay in many modern kitchens. It's a surprisingly well-populated community, too "Show Me Your Aspics," which was started in December 2016, has nearly 36,000 members. There are two fan pages dedicated to his recipes and for many, like me, he is something of a Virgil figure through the weird, wild world of the online aspic community. Pictures of Albala's gelatin forms - like a recent pink rosé Champagne and a shell stock cream reduction poured around a full lobster tail and set in a lobster-shaped mold - now garner thousands of likes on Facebook. I made another, and then another and figured out how to put things in there without using, you know, Jell-O mixes and without following old kitchen recipes - although a lot of people in that page do that - and somehow just sort of rose to extraordinary acclaim within that page." "And it turns out I was pretty good at it. "Besides, someone dares me, I have to do it," Albala said. He is a history professor at the University of the Pacific where he teaches about the intersection of civilization and food and has authored or edited over 25 books on the subject including " Eating Right in the Renaissance" and "Food in Early Modern Europe." It's not like Albala is a stranger to the kitchen. After sending Albala two invites to the group that were promptly deleted ("Based on the title" he explains), they finally sent a message: "Make an aspic, I dare you and post it there." ![]() It all began with a dare, he says, from a friend who had seen this Facebook group called "Show Me Your Aspics," dedicated to molded gelatin creations.
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