When it comes to food, aspic is not a very inviting word. It sounds vaguely medicinal and off-puttingly Victorian, and it doesn’t get any better when you find out what it actually is: meat and vegetables set into a savory solid gel made from bone broth.

Jello, another popular gelatin creation, doesn’t fare much better. It’s just as likely to elicit images of a hospital or a children’s birthday party as it is to remind one of those weird half-sweet, half-savory monstrosities from mid-century cocktail parties.

While in some cuisines gelatin creations never went out of vogue — they’re an essential part of quinceañeras in some regions, and meat aspics remain popular in Germany — it can be hard to imagine them regaining the universal appeal they once held. And yet that’s what’s happening in a number of online communities. Pinterest is covered in how-to guides for making Mexican milk jello — artsy gelatin sculptures that are cut so perfectly they look more like Caithness paperweights than something you can eat.

On the savory side of things, aspics are being served in upscale places like the Thermae Spa in Bath, England and London’s Chelsea Riverside Brasserie. Both establishments play it relatively safe using tomato rather than meat for flavor and treating it as a garnish rather than a complete dish. For anything more adventurous, you need to turn to the internet where recipes abound and DIY enthusiasts are more than willing to be your guide.

On the Facebook group Show Me Your Aspics, retro food enthusiasts share vintage photographs and gelatin recipes, but a fair amount of the 22,000 members also try preparing and eating their gelatin art themselves. Some of them are familiar jellos we grew up eating — simple fruit flavors cast in traditional ring, fish, or rabbit molds.

Others try to recreate alarming retro recipes of yore — like Perfection Salad, which includes vegetables set in a lemon jello ring — with greater and lesser degrees of seriousness, always posting their failures for the group to laugh over.

Then there are those who take their gelatin art to the next level, incorporating complicated flavor profiles, unorthodox ingredients like roses or chickpeas, and decorative techniques that you wouldn’t have seen in the Middle Ages when aspic dishes first went into vogue.