Culinary History: Why was aspic so popular | AskHistorians Archive Observer

Oh! I collect old, weird cookbooks, and love culinary history. Aspic's been around for ages - references to gelling food go way, way back. I'm guessing you mean America (and possibly other Western countries) in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, though. As a note, "head cheese" is a sort of aspic which is still quite popular in many countries which are not the US. The history of Aspic's decline in popularity might actually be more interesting, as it ties into modern food purity concepts and advertising.

Given the usual caveats of trying to determine why a thing became popular - it's fairly safe to say aspic's visible popularity in the United States pre 1970 was partly driven by practicality, partly by availability, and partly by the increase in marketing.

Refridgeration was still relatively new (I have a fun cookbook from the 70's calling it "your secret servant" if that gives any context, displaying the wonders of how an average person could set up the logistics of a major party by preparing elements beforehand and using cold storage). So if you look at the timeline of refridgeration becoming prevalent in American households and the timeline of Aspic's popularity as measured by cookbooks with pictures of things floating in gel, throughout, having a fridge was still a major purchase in most households, almost a status symbol in a lot of cases.

Gelatine itself in the US has an interesting history - you have Knoxx and Jell-O as major American companies selling it today. Koxx was actually a company developed in the late 1800's in New York after the main guy watched his wife make gelatine at home and went "that's a lot of work, what if I pre-granulated it?" So gelatine before Knox was time consuming hard work. Something to consider with the status impact of food is that things which are difficult and take time for a purely aesthetic result are generally the provision of that part of society which has time and money to spare, and when you have a change in technology which suddenly places a previously difficult status item into the reach of a larger population of folks with fewer resources you can expect the popularity of that item to experience a small surge. (The history of Knox Gelatine is both technically gross and very sweet.)

So you also have nutrition: aspic, using gelatine, was a high protein addition to a meal and could make other items cooked hot in it last longer by keeping air off it. You have food storage evolving with fridges being sold throughout the early to mid 1900's. Then you have this new gelatine tech in the late 1800's meeting a this with two major, major wars which had huge impacts on food availability, and you have the rise of the cookbook publishing industry with ilusteations and then photography and a rise in popular literacy and a rise in the average homeowner being able to engage in formal dinners and entertainment, much like the upper class did. And in all this you do not have our current squeamishness over sweet vs savory when it comes to Jell-O, because their marketing was still in it's infancy as far as selling the concept of Jell-O as a solely sweet desert.

So housewives with a frugal mindset can extend the protein dish using leftovers in a visually striking suspension which frankly looks a bit like a floating magic trick, especially back then. Think of the modern person eating bubbles of something full of smoke to experience weird cuisine today - aspics were interesting looking. Same fascination with new tech combined with an increasing middle class with time and energy for hosting parties combined with marketing combined with a wartime frugality mindset and a bunch of other factors.

It's worth noting that there are modern interpretations which use the visual metaphor of "things trapped and floating" as an emotional response to the state of the housewife in the 50's and 60's, and there was definitely an interesting sense of rebellion - women worked the factories in the war but we're kicked out after, then you have the generation fed up with the frustration of their parents rebelling against taking hours in the kitchen for a status they didn't value.

Aspic's decline in the US might be as interesting as its popularity. After all, this is a food with a long, long history, right? What made us give it up in favor of other foods? What led to the current squeamishness with which we currently regard it? Is it the translucency, or the association with Jell-O as a poverty food for cheap deserts?