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Mousse of Ham in Cases
Finely mince one pound lean cooked ham, place it in a mortar with the yolks of two eggs and pound to a paste; then press through a sieve into a bowl. Season with a saltspoon grated nutmeg, a saltspoon cayenne pepper, adding one tablespoon sherry wine; mix well with a spoon, then gradually add one gill cold cream, continually mixing meanwhile. Beat to a stiff froth three egg whites and gently mix with the preparation. Fill up six small paper cases. Place the cases in a tin and bake in the oven for fifteen minutes. Remove, dress on a dish with a folded napkin and send to the table.
A savoury hot mousse in the old French sense: pounded forcemeat lightened with cream and whipped whites, baked just long enough to set. The whole dish turns on how gently you fold and how briefly it bakes.
- The hinge: fold, then bake at onceOnce the whites go in, the mixture starts to deflate. Fill the cases and get them into the oven immediately; a mousse that stands on the counter bakes flat and dense.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A moderate oven, 350F, for the stated fifteen minutes suits small cases; they are done when just set at the centre and barely domed. Overbaking squeezes out the cream and makes the ham grainy.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. Use heavy cream, unwhipped and cold.
- A saltspoonAbout a quarter teaspoon. A quarter teaspoon of cayenne in a pound of ham is aggressive by modern taste; an eighth is plenty for most palates, and the nutmeg is better freshly grated.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in under a minute. Pass the paste through a fine sieve anyway if you want the texture the recipe intends, since ham holds stringy fibres that no machine fully breaks down.
- Paper casesSmall paper soufflé cases or ramekins of about 4 fl oz capacity, buttered. The tin is only a carrier, not a water bath, though standing them in a shallow pan of hot water gives a more even set.
- SaltNone is added, and correctly so; cooked ham is already well salted. Taste the paste before folding in the whites.
- Yield and servingSix small cases, enough for six as a first course or a light lunch dish with bread and a sharp salad. Dressing on a folded napkin was a standard service convention of the period; it may also have kept the cases from sliding on the platter.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book (1906) reflects that house's thoroughly French idiom: mousse here means not a cold dessert but a pounded, sieved, cream-lightened forcemeat of the kind often traced to Careme's successors and the classical repertoire they built, served hot in little cases. Recipes of this sort were the elegant end of thrift, a way of turning the last of a boiled or baked ham into something that could go to a dinner table on a napkin-lined platter, and they depend on a mortar-and-sieve method. The paper case itself was a period fashion, cheap, disposable and just formal enough.