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Maple Mousse
1 cup maple syrup 1 pint whipped cream Yolks of 4 eggs (or 2 whole eggs) Boil the syrup and pour it over the well-beaten eggs. When cold, add the whipped cream. Pour into mould and set on ice for 3 or 4 hours
A still-frozen mousse from the era before home freezers: the egg-and-syrup base is a pâte à bombe, lightened with cream and hardened in a packed mould. Three points in the original need translating for a modern kitchen.
- Boil the syrup properlyThe book says only "Boil the syrup." Most reconstructions take this as boiling it down towards the soft-ball stage, around 235-240F on a thermometer, rather than merely bringing it to a bubble; syrup poured over the yolks at a much lower temperature will do less to thicken the base.
- Pour slowly, whisk constantlyAdd the hot syrup to the beaten yolks in a thin stream with the mixer running, or the yolks will scramble against the side of the bowl. Beat until the bowl is cool to the touch, five to eight minutes, before folding in the cream.
- Egg safetyThe hot syrup heats the yolks but does not reliably hold them at a pasteurising temperature, and nothing is cooked afterwards. Use pasteurised eggs, or set the bowl over simmering water and take the base to 160F before whipping it cool.
- A pint of creamOne pint is 2 cups. The line reads "1 pint whipped cream," which most likely means a pint of liquid cream, whipped; whipped to soft peaks it will roughly double in volume. Whip it no further than soft peaks or the folded mixture turns grainy.
- "Set on ice"For a mixture like this the phrase most likely means a mould packed in a pail of crushed ice and coarse salt, which freezes harder than ice alone, though the recipe does not spell this out. Use the freezer instead: the recipe's 3 or 4 hours in a covered metal or ceramic mould, with no churning, since the whipped cream supplies the air.
- UnmouldingDip the mould in warm water for a few seconds, run a thin knife round the rim and turn it out onto a chilled plate. Let it stand 5 minutes before serving so the surface is not frozen hard.
- YieldAbout 5 cups, serving 6 to 8.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell its flour, and maple syrup appears in it as a sweetener in its own right. A "mousse" in this sense is not the gelatine-set dessert of later decades but a still-frozen cream, hardened in a covered mould buried in ice and rock salt rather than churned in a freezer, a method that let a household serve something like ice cream without the labour of cranking. The egg-yolk-and-boiled-syrup base is the same construction French cooks call a pâte à bombe.