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Coffee Mousse
Make same as Strawberry Mousse, using one cup boiled coffee in place of fruit juice.
This is a cross-reference recipe: it only works if you have the Strawberry Mousse entry in front of you. That recipe is a still-frozen mousse — sweetened whipped cream set with a little dissolved gelatine, packed in a mold and buried in ice and salt rather than churned.
- Find the parent recipe firstEverything but the flavouring comes from Strawberry Mousse: the cream, the sweetening and the freezing method. Do not guess at proportions from this line alone.
- "Boiled coffee"In this period the term meant coarse grounds boiled with water in an open pot and settled with eggshell or cold water. Any strong brewed coffee stands in; make it stronger than drinking strength, since cream and sugar mute it, and chill it completely before it goes near whipped cream.
- Coffee is not fruit juiceThe strawberry version brings some sugar and acid of its own. If the parent recipe relies on that, unsweetened coffee cup for cup may leave the mousse less sweet and, since sugar depresses the freezing point, a little firmer. Taste the base before it goes into the mold.
- Gelatine strengthIf the parent recipe uses gelatine, note that period granulated gelatine is generally reckoned to have been less consistent than modern powder. One modern envelope is a scant tablespoon, about 1/4 oz, and sets roughly two cups of liquid -- err toward less rather than more or the mousse turns rubbery instead of light.
- Cream"Thick cream" of the period was around 30-40 percent fat. Use heavy or whipping cream, whip it only to soft peaks, and fold the cool coffee and gelatine in gently; overwhipped cream breaks when it freezes.
- Freezing without ice and saltThe original method packs the sealed mold in ice and rock salt for several hours; check the parent recipe for its ratio and timing. A domestic freezer at 0F does the same job in four to six hours; cover the surface directly with plastic so it does not take on freezer smells.
- ServingStill-frozen mousse is hard straight from a modern freezer; let it stand 10 to 15 minutes, and dip the mold briefly in warm water to turn it out.
Mousse, from the French for froth or foam, entered American cookbooks in the late nineteenth century as the still-frozen alternative to ice cream: no crank, no churning, just sweetened whipped cream lightly bound with gelatine and left to set in a packed mold. That mattered in a household without mechanical refrigeration, where ice came by the block from an icehouse and every frozen dish was a small logistical event. Recipes of the kind leaned heavily on cross-references like this one, a habit of the era's cookery teaching, which drilled a base technique and then varied the flavouring. Coffee was one such variation at the turn of the century, when strong boiled coffee was a fixture of the American table.