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Chocolate Mousse
Soak a level tablespoonful of gelatin in a quarter of a cup of cold water. Melt two squares of unsweetened chocolate in half a cupful of boiling water, add a cup of sugar and a teaspoonful of vanilla, then the softened gelatin, stir until cool, add two and a half cups of heavy cream whipped stiff. Pour into a mold with a cover until brimful, protect with parchment paper, adjust the cover and pack in ice and salt for four hours.
This is a still-frozen mousse, not a chilled spoon dessert: it is packed in an ice-and-salt bath rather than churned, and the gelatin keeps it from setting into a solid brick. A freezer does the same job with less mess.
- GelatinA level tablespoon of granulated gelatin is very close to one standard envelope (about 1/4 oz, 7 g). Soak it in the cold water until it swells and goes opaque, roughly 5 minutes, before it meets the hot chocolate.
- Squares of chocolateA square means a 1-ounce block of unsweetened baking chocolate, so this is 2 oz total. Unsweetened is essential here — the cup of sugar is calculated against it, and substituting semisweet will make the mousse cloying.
- The hinge: stir until coolThe chocolate base must be cool but still fluid when the whipped cream goes in. Warm base deflates the cream into soup; base left too long sets into rubbery threads that will not disperse. Cool it to about room temperature, stirring, and fold immediately.
- Whipping the creamTwo and a half cups of heavy cream whips to roughly five cups. Take it to soft-to-medium peaks rather than stiff-stiff — cream whipped to the edge of graininess folds badly and can break when frozen.
- Instead of ice and saltRock salt and cracked ice around a sealed mold was the domestic freezing method before mechanical refrigeration. A covered metal mold or loaf pan in the freezer for 4 to 6 hours, or overnight, does the same thing. The parchment and tight cover existed to keep brine and ice water out.
- Filled brimfulUnlike churned ice cream this mixture is not aerated further and barely expands, so filling the mold to the top is correct. Press the parchment directly onto the surface to keep ice crystals from forming.
- UnmoldingDip the mold in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate. Let the mousse stand 5 to 10 minutes before serving; straight from the freezer it is too hard to taste of much.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight generously. It keeps a week in the freezer, well wrapped, though the texture is best on the first day.
Mousse is simply French for froth or foam, and in the early twentieth century American kitchens used the word for a specific thing: a frozen cream dessert set without churning, cousin to the parfait and the biscuit glacé. Where a custard ice cream needed a crank freezer and constant agitation, a mousse was stabilized with gelatin and whipped cream and left to harden undisturbed in a sealed mold buried in cracked ice and rock salt — the salt depresses the melting point of the ice and drives the brine well below freezing. That made it the party dessert a household could manage without a churn or, later, without much freezer space. The whole appeal is that it is finished hours before the guests arrive and needs nothing at the last minute but a warm cloth around the mold.