Today I am making a vegetable salad with aspic.  It's not a complicated dish but it does take time  

and needs an eye for detail. It'll do nicely  for a summer luncheon dish for a ladies' lunch.

For this recipe, you will need...

I'm going to start with the vegetables. I  have potato, carrots, celery, green beans  

and cauliflower. Mary-Ann has neatly and  precisely cut the vegetables into slices  

and small shapes. It's important to keep them  consistent so that each mouthful is just right.  

You could use boiled vegetables from dinner so  long as they are still presentable. These I've  

specially blanched. You don't want to boil them  for too long otherwise they'll fall to pieces.  

I like to keep them all separate like this  so that my salad will be nice and balanced.  

But first I'm going to take out some of these  florets and some of the carrots for later.

Now, for my mayonnaise, I have two egg yolks  and I'm going to add a little mustard and salt.  

Be generous with the salt. After all,  'salad' comes from 'sal' which is salt.

Mayonnaise takes time and patience to make. You  need to add the salad oil a little drop at a time.

I do like mayonnaise. Not just for  salads but also as an accompaniment.  

And if it's nice and thick, I like to pipe it.

Mayonnaise is a French word but I  don't think the recipe is that old.  

I trained under a French chef and it  set me in good standing! There was a  

French chef here at Audley End House  before I arrived, Monsieur Merer.  

I understand he was very extravagant and  didn't know his way around a pudding!

As I would like my mayonnaise to set, I'm now  going to add some aspic. Aspic is a savoury jelly  

that can be used to thicken  sauces like this or as a garnish.  

You can buy aspic nowaways from the grocer,  

although it's a good idea to  know how to make your own.  

We use a good veal stock and calves' feet which  are then boiled down and clarified. A similar  

way really to making gelatine although you can  buy very good quality gelatine from the grocer.

I'm now going to add my vegetables.  Just a small handful of each. Oh,  

and my capers and gherkins and olives.

This is a moulded salad so I'm using my Charlotte  mould, but you could use any shape mould:  

a conical shape, or even a funnel... if you work  in an ill-equipped kitchen. It's already been  

well greased and in the top I've got a circle  of greased paper so the salad will come out.  

It's sitting in a bowl of ice and all I  need to do now is to add my salad mix.

And now that's ready to go into  the refrigerator — the ice box.

Now that I've turned the salad  out, I've put it on a plate  

and it's sitting on a bowl of  ice. It's time to decorate it.  

Round the outside I'm going to put some of  the asparagus. I shall dip it in some aspic  

and stick it around the outside.  

I'm going to keep an eye on the asparagus and  if it looks like they might be coming away,  

I'll just tie a piece of string around the outside  to hold them in place until just before we serve.

For a salad like this, you wouldn't necessarily  need to use the mayonnaise in the middle.  

You could just use the mould and then attach  your vegetables all around the outside.  

My favourite set mayonnaise  are the ones with tomatoes.

Now that the asparagus is in place I'm  going to take a little bit of celeriac.  

Celeriac isn't very common so will add a  little bit of exotic taste to the salad.

And on the celeriac I shall place my little crown.

And around it I think some  cauliflower and some of the carrot.

You could use one of the other colours  of carrots: perhaps white or purple.

And now to decorate the plate, I'm  going to use some aspic with beef stock  

which should catch the light  very nicely in the dining room.

And now I'm going to add some quail's eggs.

And there you are. Vegetable salad with aspic.