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Piquant Ham Mousse
Soften a tablespoonful of gelatin in a quarter of a cup of cold water and dissolve in a half cup of boiling water, add a teaspoonful of Gulden's mustard, a tablespoonful of minced parsley, a teaspoonful of lemon juice. Now add three cupfuls of minced boiled ham. When cool, fold in half a cup of heavy cream, that has been beaten stiff. Turn into a mold rinsed in cold water and chill in the ice box. When served, garnish with shredded hearts of lettuce and stuffed olives.
A straightforward gelatin mousse of the kind that filled American luncheon menus between the wars. Nothing here is out of reach, but two details decide whether it slices cleanly or weeps.
- Gelatin measureOne tablespoon of powdered gelatin is roughly one and a quarter envelopes of the modern quarter-ounce packets. Three-quarters of a cup of total liquid set with that much gelatin gives a firm, sliceable mousse rather than a soft spoonable one.
- Temperature of the foldingThis is the hinge. The gelatin base must be cool and just beginning to thicken before the whipped cream goes in. Fold it in while the mixture is still warm and the cream deflates into liquid; wait too long and the base sets in lumps you cannot smooth out.
- Mincing the ham"Minced" here means finely chopped by hand or run through a food grinder, not pureed. A food processor works if you pulse it in short bursts and stop while the texture is still granular; a smooth paste turns the mousse pasty.
- Gulden's mustardStill made. Any sharp brown or spicy mustard gives the same effect. Yellow ballpark mustard will read as sweeter and flatter.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is listed, most likely because the boiled ham was expected to carry the seasoning. Taste the base before folding in the cream and correct with black pepper and, if needed, a little salt.
- The ice boxAn ice box, not a freezer compartment. Chill in the refrigerator at least four hours, and overnight for a mold this dense.
- Mold and unmoldingCloser to five cups of mixture, so a 1 1/2-quart mold or loaf pan. Rinsing the mold in cold water was one of the common methods, oiling being the other; dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled platter to release.
- YieldSix as a luncheon main course, eight to ten as part of a cold buffet.
Cook and Be Cool belongs to a genre of American cookery writing that flourished with the spread of mechanical refrigeration in the 1920s and 1930s: books built around cold food, meant to keep the cook out of a hot kitchen in summer. Gelatin was the workhorse of that genre, and "mousse" in this period could mean simply a cold dish lightened with whipped cream, savoury as often as sweet. Minced cooked ham bound in aspic or gelatin was an economical way to stretch the end of a boiled ham into a whole meal, and shredded lettuce hearts and stuffed olives were a familiar finish for such dishes. Gulden's spicy brown mustard has been made in New York since the nineteenth century, and the recipe's naming of it suggests it was the assumed default when something sharper than plain yellow was wanted.