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Mousse Au Maraschino, Iced
Line a clean quart pudding mould with white paper and imbed it in salted ice. Place four egg yolks in a copper basin with three ounces fine sugar; set on the fire and rapidly whisk up for five minutes; remove from the fire, set the basin on the ice, add two tablespoons maraschino, one tablespoon kirsch and continually stir until thoroughly cold; then add one pint whipped cream; gently mix with a skimmer, then fill up the mould, tightly cover, bury in a pail of broken ice with rock salt and let freeze for two hours. Remove, unmould on a cold dish with a folded napkin, remove the paper and serve.
A still-frozen mousse — no churning, no ice-cream machine — built on a warm egg-yolk sabayon folded into whipped cream. The whole thing hinges on getting the yolk base completely cold before the cream goes in.
- The hinge: chill the base fullyIf the sabayon is even slightly warm when the whipped cream is folded in, the cream deflates and the mousse freezes into a dense, icy block. Stir over ice until the base is cold to the touch, then fold.
- Cooking the yolks"Set on the fire" means gentle heat, and a copper basin over direct flame is unforgiving. Use a bowl over barely simmering water and whisk until the mixture thickens to a ribbon and registers 160F on an instant-read thermometer — that both sets the foam and takes the eggs out of the raw range.
- MeasuresThree ounces of fine sugar is by weight, about 85 g or a scant half cup; "fine" here most likely means caster sugar, which dissolves in the yolks without grinding. "One pint whipped cream" probably means a pint after whipping, in which case start with about 1 cup (240 ml) of heavy cream — but the original may equally mean a pint of cream before it is whipped.
- MaraschinoThe original means the dry Dalmatian cherry-stone liqueur, still sold as Luxardo Maraschino, not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Kirsch is unsweetened cherry brandy. Both alcohols also keep the mousse from freezing rock hard.
- Salted iceA pail of crushed ice with rock salt, roughly three parts ice to one part salt by volume, drops well below 32F and is what makes an unchurned mousse freeze. A modern freezer does the same job: pack the covered mould in the coldest part and allow 4 to 6 hours rather than two.
- The paper liningWhite paper lining a metal mould is a release layer — parchment does the job, or brush the mould with a neutral oil. Cover the top tightly so no salt water or freezer smell reaches the mousse.
- Folding toolA "skimmer" is a flat perforated spoon; a large silicone spatula folds more gently and loses less air.
- Unmoulding and yieldDip the mould in cool water for a few seconds, invert onto a chilled plate, peel the paper. The folded napkin under the mousse is period restaurant service. A quart mould serves six to eight.
Frozen mousses and bombes belong to the era before domestic refrigeration, when any iced dessert depended on a delivered block of ice and a bag of rock salt, and when a still-frozen mixture — rich enough with cream and alcohol not to need churning — was the practical way to serve ice without a machine. The flavouring is maraschino, distilled from marasca cherries and their crushed stones, historically associated with Zara on the Dalmatian coast and best known through the Luxardo house; in the late nineteenth century it was one of the standard perfumes of the pastry kitchen. Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, wrote with a cook's grasp of technique, which is why the instructions assume a copper basin, a pail of broken ice and the knowledge of when a sabayon is done — and why the dish arrives at table on a folded napkin, in the restaurant manner of the day.