No. 2539

Mousseline of Pullet

Mousseline de Poularde

Poach in butter four well-pared pullet fillets; when cold pound them with a third of their quantity of the very best butter; season and rub through a sieve. Put this pulp into a thin iron vessel and beat it for five minutes with a spoon to have it smooth, then incorporate slowly three gills of blond chaudfroid sauce (No. 596); try a little of this preparation on ice to rectify if necessary, and when perfect thicken it on ice, stirring in a quarter as many truffles, red beef tongue and cooked mushrooms, the whole cut in three-sixteenths of an inch dice, also the volume of a pint of well-drained whipped cream. With this preparation fill an oval mold decorated with truffles and coated with a light coating of jelly, or else several quenelle molds, covered with half-set jelly, having used a brush for this purpose; then smooth the top nicely and keep the mold on pounded ice for one hour. At the last moment unmold the mousseline on a cold dish and surround the base with pretty jelly croutons (No. 2442).

← No. 2538 Mousseline of Pheasants, Princess Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2540 Mousseline of Woodcock →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic cold chaud-froid mousse from the Delmonico's repertoire, built on three separate sub-recipes and finished in an aspic-lined mold. Nothing about it is difficult, but the whole thing turns on temperature control at the moment the cream goes in.

The hinge: fold the cream at setting pointThe chicken-and-chaudfroid base must be cold and just beginning to thicken before the whipped cream goes in. Warm base melts the cream to soup; fully set base breaks into lumps and no amount of beating recovers it. Ranhofer's instruction to "try a little of this preparation on ice" is a genuine working test — chill a spoonful, see how it sets, and correct seasoning then, since cold dulls salt noticeably.
PoulardeA poularde is a fattened young hen, larger and richer than a standard broiler. Four breast fillets from two 3-4 lb chickens are the practical equivalent, and you want them poached gently in butter to just cooked through, not browned.
Gills and quantitiesA gill is half a cup, so three gills of chaudfroid is about 1 1/2 cups. "The volume of a pint of well-drained whipped cream" means a pint measured after whipping, roughly 2 cups of the finished foam.
Blond chaudfroidRanhofer's No. 596 is a pale veloute enriched and set with aspic or gelatin — a sauce that coats when warm and holds when cold. Any modern chaudfroid built on a chicken veloute with dissolved gelatin will behave the same way; without the gelatin the mousseline will not unmold.
A thin iron vesselPresumably a light pan, which also chills quickly once the preparation goes on ice; the recipe does not say why. Use a stainless or glass bowl instead — prolonged contact with bare iron can grey a pale chicken puree and give it a metallic edge.
Rubbing through a sieveThe pounding and sieving is what gives the base its smoothness before the cream goes in. A food processor gets you most of the way, but pass the puree through a fine drum sieve or tamis afterward; sinew that survives the machine will be obvious in a smooth cold mousse.
The garnish diceThree-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm. Truffle, cooked tongue and mushroom cut that size stay visible in the slice; smaller and they muddy the color of the mousse.
Chilling and unmoldingOne hour on pounded ice reflects a mold sitting in direct contact with ice at close to 32F. In a domestic refrigerator allow three to four hours, or overnight. To unmold, dip the mold two or three seconds in warm water and invert onto a chilled dish.
Yield and serviceThe quantities are substantial: the sauce and whipped cream alone come to about 3 1/2 cups before the pounded fillets and the dice, so the mold needs to be well over a quart. It is a buffet dish and should go back under refrigeration promptly — a gelatin-set cream mousse should not stand out more than about two hours.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a whole family of numbered mousselines in the book — pheasant and woodcock stand on either side of it — that differ mainly in the flesh pounded into the base. Chaud-froid, literally "hot-cold," names the technique rather than the dish: a sauce cooked hot, then set cold with aspic so it clings to whatever it coats. The style is pure nineteenth-century grand cuisine, in which the cold buffet was the showpiece of a long service and the kitchen's skill was measured by molds, jelly croutons and truffle inlay rather than by anything served warm. The heavy reliance on pounded ice is also a period marker: natural ice was still the ordinary chilling medium of the professional kitchen when Ranhofer wrote, even as mechanical refrigeration was beginning to appear in large commercial premises.