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Chicken Mousse
Pound one-half the breast of a raw chicken and press it through a purée strainer, adding to it the white of an egg, slightly beaten, one-half cup of cream, and salt, pepper and paprika to taste. Combine this with another mixture made of a cup of cooked chicken meat, rubbed through a sieve, the white of an egg slightly beaten and one-half cup of thick cream beaten stiff. When these two mixtures are well blended, turn into one large mold, or several individual ones, set in pan of hot water, cover with oiled paper and bake until firm. The mold may be decorated with truffles, capers or pimentoes before turning in the mixture. When serving, turn out on platter and surround with Béchamel sauce.
A French mousseline forcemeat in American dress: raw breast meat bound with egg white and cream, lightened with a second, cooked mixture, then baked gently in a water bath. Almost everything that can go wrong here is a temperature problem.
- Keep everything coldA mousseline holds together because cold cream and egg white emulsify with cold protein. Chill the bowl, the cream and the chicken, and if the mixture warms while you work, return it to the refrigerator before combining the two parts. Warm cream will break out as fat in the mold.
- The purée strainerA purée strainer is a period sieve for puréeing, most likely a conical perforated strainer or a drum sieve, and pounding in a mortar then pushing the meat through it is the pre-appliance route to a smooth farce. A food processor does the pounding; still pass the raw mixture through a fine sieve afterward, since that is what removes sinew and gives the finished mousse its texture.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Bake in a moderate oven, 325-350F, with the water in the pan hot when it goes in and kept below a simmer. Any hotter and the custard curdles and weeps.
- "Bake until firm" in minutesIndividual molds of about 4 oz need roughly 25-30 minutes; one large mold of this quantity, 45-60. It is set when the center reads about 165F and a knife comes out clean. Chicken forcemeat carries raw poultry through, so cook to temperature rather than by eye alone.
- Thick creamPeriod "thick cream" means a rich cream: heavy cream at roughly 36 percent fat, or richer. Half the cream goes in unwhipped for the raw farce and half is whipped stiff for the cooked mixture; a lighter cream around 30 percent whips less stably and the mousse loses some of its lift.
- Oiled paperButtered parchment cut to the diameter of the mold, laid directly on the surface, then foil over the pan if the tops color. It keeps a skin from forming and stops condensation dripping into the mousse.
- Quantities and yieldHalf a raw breast plus a cup of cooked meat gives roughly 1 to 1.25 lb of mixture: six small molds, or one 4-cup mold serving six as a first course. Salt the raw farce assertively, since it will be eaten warm rather than hot.
- The decorationTruffle, caper or pimento slices are pressed against the buttered mold before filling so they appear on the surface when unmolded. Rest the baked mousse five minutes before turning out, or the pattern tears away with the mold.
- Why it sits under SaucesThe Béchamel -- Make the sauce loose enough to pool rather than coat, and finish it with a little of the cream so it sits with the mousse instead of against it.
Chicken mousse of this kind is a domestic relative of the French mousseline forcemeat, the same pounded-breast-and-cream mixture that professional kitchens shaped into quenelles and used in galantines; the technique is generally traced to nineteenth-century French practice. The second mixture, in which half the body comes from cooked chicken pushed through a sieve rather than from an all-raw farce, reduces the amount of raw breast required and would suit a cook with roast bird left over. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book to much the same audience it sold patterns to, and this recipe suggests the ambition of that readership: a molded, truffle-decorated entrée in the French manner, served with a sauce a competent cook of the period would have known well.