No. 86

Chicken Forcemeat for Mousseline

Farce de Volaille pour Mousselines

Ingredients.—One pound of chicken breast-meat, one egg-white, two gills of bechamel, four tablespoonfuls of cream forcemeat, and the value of one quart of whipped cream.

Have one pound of chicken breast-meat free of nerves; pass it twice through the machine (Fig. 47), pound it to a pulp and rub through a sieve, season with half an ounce of salt, red pepper and nutmeg, and incorporate gradually into it one egg-white and two gills of bechamel (No. 409). Strain all this through a sieve, and put it in a metal vessel on the ice for fifteen minutes, then work it well with a whip, incorporating gradually into it four tablespoonfuls of cream forcemeat (No. 74) and the value of a quart of whipped cream thoroughly drained. Try a little of it in a mold and if too consistent add a little more of the whipped cream.

← No. 85 Veal Godiveau Elementary Methods No. 87 Game Forcemeat for Mousseline →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A classic mousseline forcemeat: pureed raw breast meat lightened with bechamel and whipped cream, meant to be piped or molded and gently poached. Everything here turns on temperature.

Keep it cold, alwaysThe emulsion breaks if the puree warms. Chill the bowl, the blade and the meat, work in short bursts, and return the mixture to the refrigerator or over ice whenever it stops feeling cold to the finger.
Gills and the cream measurementA gill is half a cup, so two gills of bechamel is one cup. "The value of one quart of whipped cream" means whipped cream amounting to a quart in volume once beaten and drained — roughly two cups of heavy cream before whipping.
The salt is out of scaleHalf an ounce is about two and a half teaspoons of fine salt to a pound of meat, close to 3 percent. Modern palates want 1 to 1.5 percent, so around 1 teaspoon of fine salt per pound, adjusted after a test quenelle.
Red pepperThis is cayenne, not paprika and not chili flake. A pinch is enough; it is there to lift the mixture, not to be tasted.
The machine and the sieveFig. 47 is a hand meat grinder. A food processor does the double grinding and the pounding in one step, but the sieving still matters — pressing the puree through a drum sieve or fine tamis is what removes sinew and gives mousseline its texture.
Cream forcemeat No. 74A separate forcemeat preparation from earlier in the book. It adds binding insurance; if you skip it, expect a slightly looser set and compensate with marginally less whipped cream.
The test is the recipeRanhofer's instruction to try a little in a mold is the hinge. Poach a spoonful in simmering water, taste it for salt, and judge the set before committing the batch. Too firm, fold in more cream; too soft, more cream will only make it worse.
Cooking and yieldCooking -- The recipe stops at the mixture and gives no cooking directions. Mousselines of this type are generally poached in buttered molds in a water bath until just set; because the forcemeat is raw chicken and raw egg white, cook it through to a safe internal temperature.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working system set down in print — which is why this appears not as a dish but in the Elementary Methods, a numbered building block referenced by later recipes. Mousseline forcemeat is the lightest member of the French forcemeat family: where a godiveau (No. 85, just before it) leans on suet and a quenelle mixture on panada, the mousseline gets its body from egg white protein and its lift from whipped cream folded in cold. The technique belongs to the same late-nineteenth-century refinement of haute cuisine that Escoffier codified a few years later, and it survives largely unchanged in professional kitchens, where the food processor has replaced the mortar but the cold bowl and the test quenelle have not moved at all.