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Mousses and Frozen Puddings
Mousses and frozen puddings are delicious dinner desserts and have the advantage of being easily made. For coffee mousse, heat together in a double boiler, one and one-quarter cupfuls of sugar and one and one-half cupfuls of strong coffee. When the sugar is dissolved, add the yolks of five eggs, and stir the mixture until it begins to thicken, when it must be removed quickly, and stirred until cold. Fold in carefully one pint of cream, whipped until it is dry; turn it into a mould and put on the cover. To prevent salt water from entering, paste a strip of buttered paper around the edge; pack it in fine ice and salt so that it is completely buried, and leave it for four hours. When ready to serve, plunge the form quickly into hot water and turn it onto a plate.
A still-frozen mousse: no churning, no ice cream machine, just a cooked coffee custard lightened with whipped cream and left to set hard. The whole thing hangs on getting the custard off the heat at the right moment and folding the cream in cold.
- The hinge: pull the custard earlyFive yolks in hot coffee syrup can curdle quickly once the mixture thickens, though the heavy sugar content gives a little margin. Cook over simmering — not boiling — water, stirring constantly, and take it off as soon as it coats a spoon, somewhere around 170-175F. Stirring it cold, ideally in a bowl set over ice, stops the carryover cooking the recipe is warning about when it says "removed quickly".
- "Strong coffee"Period books rarely say how strong; they assume something well above table strength, not espresso. Use about 1 1/2 cups of very strong drip coffee or diluted espresso; freezing dulls flavour, so err strong. Cold-brew concentrate cut with water also works.
- Whipped "until it is dry"This means stiff peaks, just short of the point where the cream breaks into butter. Whip cold heavy cream in a chilled bowl and stop while it still looks glossy. A pint is 2 cups, yielding roughly a quart whipped.
- Freezing without ice and saltThe ice-and-salt pack was the only cold source available; a home freezer at 0F does the same job. Cover the mould tightly with plastic film pressed to the surface, then foil, and freeze 4-6 hours or overnight. The buttered-paper seal is only needed if you are actually burying the mould in brine.
- If you do use ice and saltThe classic ratio is about three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt by volume, repacked as it melts. Fine ice matters — large chunks leave air gaps and the mousse freezes unevenly.
- UnmouldingA quick plunge means two or three seconds in hot water, no more, then invert onto a chilled plate. Longer and the outer quarter-inch turns to coffee soup. Return the plated mousse to the freezer for ten minutes if it starts to slump.
- Texture and servingWithout churning, this sets firmer and denser than ice cream. Let it stand 5-10 minutes at room temperature before slicing. The quantities make roughly 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight to ten.
Mousse in this period meant something quite specific: a sweetened base lightened with whipped cream and frozen still, without the paddle and crank of an ice cream freezer. That distinction mattered in a household that owned one hand-cranked freezer and wanted to serve several frozen courses, or none at all — a mould packed in ice and salt needed no labour once buried. The buttered paper pasted round the seam is the tell that this predates domestic mechanical refrigeration: brine from the melting pack was the constant enemy, and a leak meant a salty dessert. Coffee was a popular ice flavour of the late nineteenth century, appearing alongside caramel and burnt almond on hotel and dinner-party menus where a cold sweet closed the meal.