No. 3471

Mousse a la Semiramis

Lay a quart of well-whipped cream on a sieve to have it drain well. Pound four ounces of freshly shelled sweet almonds with half an ounce of coriander seeds and three gills of water; put this in a basin with twelve ounces of sugar; color to a pretty light red shade; add slowly and lightly the whipped cream. Imbed a high dome-shaped mold (Fig. 629) in ice, and fill with the preparation, into which add a salpicon of fruits cut in quarter-inch squares, soaked in maraschino and drained. Pack in ice, freeze for one hour for each quart of preparation, unmold over a napkin and surround with cakes iced with kirsch or rum.

← No. 3470 Fiori Di Latte with Violets, Burnt Almonds a Ices & Ice Creams No. 3472 Mousse a la Siraudin →

For the Modern Kitchen

A still-frozen mousse from Delmonico's kitchen: no eggs, no custard, no churning. The whole thing depends on getting as much water out of the cream and as much flavor out of the almonds as possible before the two are combined.

The hinge: drain the creamWhipped cream left on a sieve sheds loose liquid, and that liquid is what turns a mousse icy rather than smooth. Whip to firm peaks, drain 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator over a bowl, and fold in the flavoring base cold so the foam does not slacken.
Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so three gills of water is 1 1/2 cups. Ranhofer's ounces are weights: 4 oz almonds is about 3/4 cup whole nuts, and 12 oz sugar is roughly 1 2/3 cups. The text says 'a quart of well-whipped cream' and does not make clear whether the quart is measured before or after whipping.
Almond milk, not almond pastePounding the almonds and coriander with the water makes an almond milk. Modern equipment does this in a blender; the recipe does not call for straining, but pressing the mixture through cheesecloth or fine muslin will keep solids from reading as grit once frozen.
The coloring'A pretty light red shade' would most likely have been got with carmine or cochineal in 1894, added drop by drop. The recipe does not name the colorant; it is decorative only and can be left out entirely without touching the flavor.
Salpicon of fruitsA salpicon here is simply fruit diced to a uniform quarter inch, macerated in maraschino and drained well. Drain it thoroughly and pat it dry; alcohol-soaked fruit that goes in wet will freeze into hard wet pockets.
Freezing without churnThe mold is buried in a mixture of crushed ice and coarse salt, which is what brings it below freezing; ice alone will not do it. A domed metal mold in a modern freezer works, but allow four to six hours rather than the hour per quart given here, and expect a slightly denser result.
UnmoldingDip the mold briefly in cool water, invert onto a folded napkin or a cold plate, and return it to the freezer to firm if it has softened. The napkin is there to absorb meltwater at the table.
YieldThe drained whipped cream plus the almond base fills a large dome mold; the finished volume, and so the number of servings, depends on whether the quart of cream is measured before or after whipping.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The Epicurean (1894) with dishes named for royalty, singers and operas, and Semiramis is one of the more literary of them: the legendary Assyrian queen of Babylon, familiar to nineteenth-century diners chiefly through Rossini's Semiramide of 1823. The almond-and-coriander flavoring and the rosy tint are the kind of vaguely Eastern gesture such a name invited, rather than anything documented as Babylonian. The technique matters more than the label: a mousse in Ranhofer's usage is a frozen cream set in a mold packed with ice and salt, never worked with a spatula or paddle like an ice cream, so its lightness comes wholly from the air beaten into the cream beforehand. Molded frozen desserts of this sort are often said to have been a customary finish to a formal American dinner in the 1880s and 1890s.