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Chicken Mousse
Make a chicken force-meat of one-half the breast of a raw chicken pounded and forced through a purée strainer, the white of one egg slightly beaten, one-half cup heavy cream, and salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste. Add three-fourths cup cooked white chicken meat rubbed through a sieve, the white of an egg slightly beaten, and one-half cup heavy cream beaten until stiff. Decorate a buttered mould with truffles, turn in mixture, set in pan of hot water, cover with buttered paper, and bake until firm. Remove to platter, and pour around Cream or Béchamel Sauce.
Fillets of Chicken, Sauce Suprême Remove fillets from three chickens, leaving wing joint and a piece of bone attached to each fillet. Reserve mignon RUSSIAN CUTLETS. - Page 373.
DRESDEN PATTIES. - Page 380.
A cold-larder classic that a food processor makes almost trivial. Note that the verbatim text runs on into the beginning of the next recipe, "Fillets of Chicken, Sauce Suprême" — everything from "Remove fillets from three chickens" belongs to that dish, not this one.
- The hinge: keep everything coldRaw chicken breast, egg white and cream hold together far better when kept thoroughly chilled; warmth is the usual cause of a broken mixture. Chill the bowl and blade, and if the puree looks grainy or begins to weep, stop and refrigerate it for twenty minutes before continuing.
- Pounding and the purée strainerPounding and the puree strainer -- Farmer means a mortar and a sieve of the kind she calls a puree strainer. A food processor does the work in ninety seconds; pass the puree through a fine drum sieve or tamis afterward for the texture she is describing, since sinew will not break down in the machine.
- Quantities in real termsHalf the breast of a 1900 roasting chicken is roughly 4 oz of raw meat; three-fourths cup of sieved cooked white meat is about 4 oz as well. Two egg whites and one cup of heavy cream total across the two additions.
- Oven temperatureShe gives none. Bake the water bath at 325F. Higher and the custard structure curdles and squeezes out liquid; the bath water should never simmer.
- Baked until firmFor a 4-cup mould figure 45 to 60 minutes, small individual moulds 20 to 25. It is done when the centre reads at least 165F, the temperature recommended for poultry, and the mousse no longer trembles in a loose wave when the mould is nudged.
- Buttered paperParchment cut to fit, buttered side down, directly on the surface. It stops a skin forming and keeps condensation from the pan lid dripping into the mousse; foil over the whole pan is not the same thing and traps too much steam.
- TrufflesThin rounds of black truffle pressed onto the buttered mould so they appear as a pattern when it is turned out. Fresh truffle is a luxury now; a good tinned black truffle, or blanched leek greens and roasted red pepper cut with a small cutter, gives the same effect.
- Yield and servingAbout 3 cups of mixture — four as an entree course, six or eight as a first course. The recipe allows either Cream Sauce or Bechamel; pour it around the base, not over the top, so the truffle decoration stays visible.
A mousse in the Boston Cooking-School sense is not a dessert but a forcemeat lightened with whipped cream and set with egg white — the French *mousse de volaille* that Escoffier's generation served in moulds ringed with sauce. Fannie Farmer's entrée chapter is where the book is most frankly Franco-American: the surrounding pages carry Russian cutlets, Dresden patties, sauce suprême, all dishes an ambitious American hostess of the 1890s would have met in a hotel dining room and wanted at home. The technique depends entirely on ice and a strong arm, which is why the recipe reads as fussy today; before the food processor, forcing raw breast meat through a sieve was slow, laborious work.