No. 3474

Fruit Mousses with Pineapple or Other Fruits

Mousses a l'Ananas ou a d'Autres Fruits

Strawberries, raspberries, apricots, peaches, pineapple, etc., to be used. A quart of cream must be whipped till very light; drain it on a sieve and then transfer it to a bowl; add a pound of pineapple puree and one pound of sugar, mixing both together with a little vanilla and a gill of kirsch; whip the preparation in a tin basin on ice for ten minutes to have the cream and pulp assimilate well together. Coat the inside of a high-dome mold with virgin strawberry cream (No. 3451), fill the center quite full with the preparation, and close the mold. Pack it in ice for one hour for each quart, unmold on a napkin and surround with small iced cakes. Strawberries, raspberries, apricots, peaches or other fruits may be substituted for the pineapple.

← No. 3473 Coffee or Chocolate Mousse Ices & Ice Creams No. 3475 Italian Mousse →

For the Modern Kitchen

A still-frozen mousse: nothing is churned, so the whipped cream is doing all the work of keeping the mixture light. Handle it gently and freeze it hard.

The hinge: whip, then drainWhipping a quart of cream releases liquid, and Ranhofer drains it off on a sieve so the finished mousse is not watery or icy.
A gill of kirschA gill is half a cup. That much spirit lowers the freezing point noticeably, which is part of the point — not spoonable, but it also means the mousse will not set as firmly as an ice cream.
Proportions and sweetnessA pound of sugar to a pound of fruit puree is very sweet by modern taste, roughly 2 cups of sugar. The sugar is also antifreeze here; cutting it much will give you a harder, icier block rather than a mousse.
Whipping on ice for ten minutesThe tin basin is set on ice; the cold keeps the cream from slackening while the puree is worked in. A metal bowl over an ice bath does much the same.
\Where the original says to pack the mold in ice for an hour per quart, it means a mixture of crushed ice and coarse salt, which drops well below 32F. In a modern freezer set to 0F, allow at least 4 to 6 hours, and expect the mousse to stay softer than commercial ice cream because of the kirsch.
The liningNo. 3451, virgin strawberry cream, is a separate strawberry preparation spread in a layer inside the mold before the mousse goes in. A plain strawberry ice cream, softened just enough to spread, serves a similar purpose; work fast and refreeze the coated mold before filling.
UnmoldingDip the closed mold briefly in cold water, run a thin knife around the edge if needed, and turn it out onto a folded napkin, which absorbs meltwater and stops the dome from sliding. Return it to the freezer if it softens before service.
Fresh pineappleRaw pineapple puree carries bromelain, a protease; it is unlikely to curdle the cream but may give bitter off-flavors if the mixture stands for a day or more. Scalding the puree briefly and cooling it before use would deactivate the enzyme, as would eating the mousse the day it is made.
YieldA quart of cream plus a pound each of puree and sugar makes a large domed mould, enough for a dozen or more servings; the original surrounds it with small iced cakes.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the whole ices chapter belongs to the era before mechanical refrigeration reached the kitchen: cold was bought as lake or river ice and made colder with rock salt. A mousse glacée is distinguished from an ice cream precisely by being still-frozen — set in a sealed mold packed in ice rather than worked in a freezer pail — which is why the recipe depends on whipped cream and a good deal of sugar and spirit for its texture instead of churning. The list of interchangeable fruits, with pineapple named first, reflects what a New York luxury restaurant could count on in the 1890s: Caribbean pineapples arrived by steamer in quantity, and by the end of the century the fruit had gone from a table centerpiece too costly to eat to something a chef would puree by the pound.