Home › Desserts-Puddings › Strawberry Mousse
Strawberry Mousse
2 C strawberries ½ C sugar 1 T granulated gelatine 2 T cold water 3 T hot water 1 C cream, beaten stiff Wash and hull strawberries, sprinkle with sugar and let stand one hour. Mash fine. Add one tablespoon granulated gelatine soaked in two tablespoons of cold water and dissolved in three tablespoons hot water. Set in pan of cold water and stir until it begins to thicken, then fold in cream beaten stiff, put in mold, cover, pack in ice, and let stand for two hours or more. Raspberries and fresh peaches may be used the same way.
Fannie Grinnell. 3 egg whites 1 C sugar 1 C water 1 pt. cream
A gelatine-set fruit mousse of the kind that filled church-supper dessert tables before home freezers. It works well in a modern refrigerator, with two small adjustments.
- The measurementsC is a cup, T a tablespoon. The recipe as printed makes roughly a quart of mousse, enough for six to eight small servings.
- Granulated gelatineOne tablespoon is three teaspoons, slightly more than a standard modern envelope (2¼ teaspoons). Use one full envelope plus a scant ¾ teaspoon, or simply one envelope for a softer, spoonable set.
- Bloom, then dissolveThe two tablespoons of cold water soften the granules; the three tablespoons of hot water dissolve them. The water should be hot enough to dissolve the granules completely; prolonged boiling is best avoided, as it can weaken the set.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentEverything depends on catching the purée as it just begins to thicken over cold water. Fold the cream in too early and the fruit sinks into a jellied layer with foam on top; too late and the gelatine sets in streaks that will not smooth out.
- SugarA cup and a half of sugar to two cups of berries is very sweet by current taste. Half to two-thirds of a cup will read as less sugary, though reducing sugar slightly loosens the set.
- "Pack in ice"This means burying the covered mold in crushed ice to chill it firm, not freezing it — no salt is called for, so nothing here freezes hard. Three to four hours in the refrigerator does the same job.
- UnmoldingDip the mold to its rim in warm water for a few seconds, run a thin knife around the edge, and invert onto a chilled plate. Rinsing the mold with cold water before filling helps it release.
- The stray ingredient listThe line at the end — 3 egg whites, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, 1 pint cream — belongs to no step in this recipe and appears to be the ingredient list of the neighbouring recipe, carried over. Ignore it.
Each recipe here carries the contributor's name as both credit and guarantee — Fannie Grinnell's mousse was vouched for by Fannie Grinnell. Mousse in this period meant a cold, moulded, cream-lightened dessert rather than the chocolate confection the word now suggests, and the technique depended on two things that became widely available to American households by the end of the nineteenth century: commercial granulated gelatine, sold in packets and requiring none of the calf's-foot boiling earlier cooks endured, and delivered ice, which made a packed mold practical in an ordinary kitchen. The note that raspberries and fresh peaches may be used the same way is characteristic of the genre, where one dependable method was expected to carry a cook through whatever the season offered.