No. 3475

Italian Mousse

Mousse a l'Italienne

This mousse will require three separate preparations: One of strawberry, one of vanilla and one of pistachios; mold it in a two-quart high-dome mold (Fig. 629). Incrust the mold in salted ice, cover and leave till perfectly cold. Make the three preparations as follows:

The Strawberry.—Mix one pint of strawberry pulp with a quarter of a pound of vanilla sugar (No. 3165); beat on ice for ten minutes, and lightly add one pint of well-whipped and thoroughly drained cream.

The Vanilla.—Half a pint of whipped cream and three ounces of pounded sugar; add a little vanilla pounded and passed through a silk sieve; mix it in lightly with the mousse.

The Pistachio.—Have half a pint of very light whipped cream, three ounces of sugar, half a gill of almond milk, a little orange flower water and a small quantity of spinach green; beat the whole lightly. Fill the bottom of the mold one-third of its height and very even with the strawberry cream; on this lay exactly in the center some macaroons soaked in maraschino; freeze this for twenty minutes, then put into it another layer of the vanilla, finishing the center with soaked macaroons; the mold should now be two-thirds filled. Freeze for twenty minutes and finish with the pistachio cream. Close the mold hermetically and pack in ice for one hour and a half-Unmold on a folded napkin.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's mousse is a still-frozen dessert: no churning, no custard, just sweetened whipped cream frozen in a mold. The technique survives intact, but the freezing apparatus and several of the ingredients need translating.

The hinge: keep the cream cold and the layers firmEach layer must be frozen solid enough to support the next, or the three colors bleed into one another and the mousse collapses when unmolded. The twenty-minute intervals assume a mold buried in ice and salt, which draws heat out far faster than freezer air; in a home freezer allow considerably longer, 45-60 minutes per layer, and chill the mold itself before you start.
"Incrust in salted ice"A packing of crushed ice and coarse salt around the mold, which drops well below 32F. A domestic freezer does the same work. Set the empty mold in the freezer while you make the first preparation.
Vanilla sugar (No. 3165)Ranhofer's own preparation: sugar pounded with vanilla beans and sifted. A split bean buried in a jar of sugar for a week gives the same thing, or use plain sugar plus a teaspoon of extract per quarter pound.
"A little vanilla pounded and passed through a silk sieve"Dried vanilla bean ground to powder and sifted. Half a teaspoon of vanilla bean powder, or the scrapings of one bean, covers it.
Almond milkNot the cartoned beverage. In 1894 this meant blanched sweet almonds pounded with a little water and strained -- essentially almond cream. Half a gill is a quarter cup; make it from about two ounces of blanched almonds ground with three tablespoons of water and pressed through cloth.
Spinach greenA house coloring made by pounding raw spinach, straining the juice, and heating it gently so the green coagulates and can be lifted off. It contributes color, not flavor. A few drops of green food coloring is the practical substitute, since the pistachio note here comes entirely from the almond milk and orange flower water.
Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is a quarter cup. The pint of strawberry pulp means sieved raw fruit, not juice -- roughly a pound and a half of hulled berries.
Draining the whipped creamNineteenth-century cream was whipped and then left in a sieve over a bowl so the loose liquid ran off, leaving only the stiff foam. With modern pasteurized heavy cream there is little to drain; whip to soft-firm peaks and fold immediately.
Unmolding and yieldDip the sealed mold in cool water for a few seconds, run a thin knife around the rim, and turn it out onto the napkin. Two quarts serves twelve to sixteen; it is very rich, and it softens fast, so bring it out only at the moment of service.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the ices chapter is among the most elaborate parts of it -- dozens of molded, layered frozen desserts built for restaurant service, when a dining room could still command a supply of ice and rock salt through the summer. The name may simply refer to the colors -- strawberry, vanilla and pistachio give red, white and green, the tricolore -- though Ranhofer does not say so; a similar three-flavor scheme appears in the Italian spumone that Neapolitan-American shops later made familiar in the United States. The construction -- alternating frozen creams with macaroons soaked in maraschino, a cherry liqueur from Zara on the Dalmatian coast that was widely used in nineteenth-century pastry work -- is characteristic of the mousse glacé, which as given here contains no egg custard and is not churned, only whipped and frozen still.