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Chocolate Mousse
Pack a 3-quart mould in salt ice, using 2 quarts salt and enough fine ice to pack solidly between the can and the tub. Cover and set in a cool place. Whip 1 quart cream and drain it well. Scrape 1 ounce of chocolate and put in a small frying-pan with 3 tablespoonfuls of boiling water, place the pan on a hot part of the fire and stir until the mixture is smooth and glossy. Add 1/2 cupful of whipped cream to this, stirring well from the bottom of the pan. Then add remainder of whipped cream slowly. Wet mould in cold water, put in the mixture, pack and cover, sealing cover of mould. Put away for three or four hours, when it will be delicious. Coffee flavoring can be substituted for the chocolate.
This is a still-frozen mousse: no churning, no custard, just whipped cream frozen solid in a sealed mould buried in salt and ice. It works in a modern freezer with almost no change, provided the mixture is kept airy.
- The hinge: keep the cream coldThe warm chocolate paste must be let down with a half cup of whipped cream first, then folded into the rest slowly, or the heat collapses the foam and you get a chocolate brick rather than a mousse. Work fast and stop as soon as the colour is even.
- Salt and ice, or the freezerThe packing described (fine ice with 2 quarts of salt; the recipe gives no ice quantity, only enough to pack solidly) drives the brine well below 32F and freezes the sealed mould from outside in. A domestic freezer at 0F does the same job; set the covered mould directly on a shelf and skip the tub entirely.
- Sealing the mouldIf you do pack in brine, the seal matters more than anything else -- period cooks ran a strip of buttered paper or a band of soft butter around the joint before burying the mould, because salt water seeping under the lid ruins the whole thing.
- "Drain it well"Whipped cream of the period was lifted from the bowl with a skimmer and left on a sieve so the unwhipped liquid ran off. Modern heavy cream at 36 percent fat or above whips dry enough that little drains; whip to soft-to-medium peaks, no further, or the mousse turns grainy.
- The chocolateOne ounce of scraped chocolate here most likely means plain unsweetened block chocolate, not eating chocolate. Melt it with the three tablespoons of boiling water -- the recipe puts the pan on 'a hot part of the fire' -- and stir until the mixture is smooth and glossy.
- SweeteningAs printed the mixture carries no sugar, which will taste starkly bitter to a modern palate against unsweetened chocolate. Sugar and a little vanilla can be beaten into the cream as it is whipped if you want it sweetened.
- Timing and textureThree to four hours is right for a brine pack. A home freezer will need longer for a mould this size, and because there is no churning the result is dense and slightly icy at the edges -- let it stand five minutes before unmoulding.
- YieldA quart of cream whips to roughly two quarts and fills a three-quart mould with headroom. Figure ten to twelve servings; it is very rich.
- The coffee variationSubstitute strong cooled coffee essence or a tablespoon of instant coffee dissolved in the same three tablespoons of boiling water. Add no more liquid than the chocolate version used, or the mousse will freeze hard.