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Spring Mousse
Chop three-fourths cup cold cooked chicken or veal, and pound in a mortar. Add gradually one-half cup heavy cream, and force mixture through purée strainer. Add one-half tablespoon granulated gelatine dissolved in three tablespoons White Stock. Add another one-half cup heavy cream and season with salt, cayenne, and horseradish powder. Pour jelly into small moulds one-third inch deep, using lemon Sauterne, or aspic. When firm, fill moulds with veal mixture and set aside to chill. Remove from moulds and serve on lettuce leaves.
A cold moulded forcemeat of the sort that filled the "Entrees" chapter of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks. Nothing here is difficult, but almost every step assumes equipment and products that have changed.
- The hinge: temperature of the puréeGelatine dissolved in three tablespoons of stock will set on contact with anything cold, leaving threads instead of a smooth mousse. Have the meat purée at cool room temperature, not refrigerator-cold, and pour the warm gelatine in a thin stream while stirring hard.
- Mortar and purée strainerA food processor does the pounding in seconds; work the meat to a paste with a little of the cream before adding the rest. Still push the result through a fine sieve or tamis, since that step is what gives the mixture its smoothness.
- Granulated gelatineHalf a tablespoon is 1½ teaspoons, roughly two-thirds of a standard ¼-oz (7 g) envelope, about 4.5 g. Sprinkle it over the cold stock, let it swell five minutes, then warm gently to dissolve rather than dumping it into hot liquid.
- White StockThe book's own light veal or chicken stock, made from unbrowned bones. Any light homemade chicken stock works; commercial broth is saltier and darker, so cut back on the salt if you use it.
- Horseradish powderDried grated horseradish, once sold alongside mustard powder and still available from spice merchants. Prepared horseradish can substitute, but it carries vinegar and moisture, so drain it and start with half a teaspoon.
- The jelly lining"Lemon Sauterne" appears to be a sweet-wine jelly given elsewhere in the book; aspic is the savoury option and is the better match here. A third of an inch is a thin coin of jelly in the bottom of each mould, meant to unmould as a glossy top.
- Moulds and yieldClose to two cups of finished mixture, enough for four to six small dariole moulds or ramekins as a first course. Chill at least three hours; dip the moulds in warm water for a count of five to release.
- Serving and holdingCream and gelatine at room temperature slump quickly. Unmould straight onto the lettuce and serve within twenty minutes of leaving the refrigerator.
Cold mousses of pounded chicken, veal, ham or fish were a fixture of the American entrée course in the 1890s and 1900s, borrowed wholesale from French service and made more practical for home cooks by one commercial development among others: granulated gelatine sold in measured packets. Earlier household cooks had to boil calf's foot or buy sheet isinglass and judge the strength by eye — jellied and moulded dishes were common enough in nineteenth-century domestic cookery, filling the household manuals of the day — but packaged gelatine made them markedly easier to produce on a spring afternoon. The name is often said to reflect the season more than any ingredient — it is a light, pale, cold dish served on lettuce, offered as relief after a winter of roasts. The layered construction, a thin disc of aspic or wine jelly set first so it becomes the crown when the mould is turned out, is the standard garde-manger trick of the period, and the choice between savoury aspic and a sweet Sauterne jelly shows how comfortably the era mixed the two registers.