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Peach Mousse
To a pint of cream whipped stiff, add a cupful of peach pulp and half a cup of powdered sugar.
Pour into a quart melon mold. Place a sheet of parchment or greased paper over the mold before putting on the cover to keep out the salt. Pack in a tub of crushed ice and salt, one part of salt to two of ice. Let freeze about four hours before serving.
A still-frozen mousse: no churning, no custard, no eggs. Everything depends on getting enough air into the cream and enough cold around the mold.
- The hinge: whip to firm, not grainyThe cream is the only thing holding air in this dessert, since it is never stirred again. Whip to stiff peaks but stop the moment it holds its shape; a few strokes past that and it begins to turn buttery, which freezes hard and greasy.
- Cream must be heavyA pint is 2 cups. Use heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent fat or above, well chilled. Ultra-pasteurized cream whips but holds less air, so the frozen result is denser.
- Peach pulpA cupful of pulp means ripe peaches peeled, pitted and crushed or sieved to a rough purée, not a smooth juice. Drain off any watery liquid before folding it in, or the mousse will freeze with ice shards through it. Roughly 3 medium peaches.
- Powdered sugarModern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch, which is fine here and in fact helps the texture slightly. Sift it before folding to avoid lumps that never dissolve in a cold mixture.
- Fold, do not stirCombine pulp and sugar first, then fold that into the cream in two or three additions with a spatula. Stirring collapses the foam and you lose the mousse.
- The mold and the paperA quart melon mold is a lidded metal form, and the parchment is a gasket: brine seeps under a loose lid and will ruin the top layer. Any 1-quart metal mold or loaf pan works if you press plastic wrap onto the surface and seal the top tightly with foil.
- Ice and saltOne part rock salt to two parts crushed ice by volume brings the bath well below freezing. Pack it right up over the shoulders of the mold, keep the tub in a cool place, and drain and replenish as the ice melts down.
- Or use the freezerA home freezer at 0F will set this in about 4 to 6 hours without any brine. It may set firmer than a salt bath that has been left to melt and warm, so let it stand about 10 minutes before unmolding.
- Unmolding and yieldDip the mold in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate. A quart serves 6 to 8 in slices.
Frozen mousses of this kind belong to the era before domestic refrigerators had reliable freezing compartments, when ice cream at home meant either a hand-cranked freezer or a mold buried in a tub of ice and salt. The still-frozen versions were the easier half of that bargain: nothing is churned, so the cook needs no machine, and the aeration comes entirely from whipped cream folded in before freezing. Salt lowers the melting point of ice, and a brine bath at roughly one part salt to two of ice will hold well below 32F for hours, which is why the technique long outlived the icehouse. A dessert that requires no oven and no stove at all suits warm-weather cooking. Peaches place it in late summer, when they were cheap and had to be used.