A chocolate mousse mistake

"Richly flavoured, yet light as air, there are few more perfect ways to end a meal." Felicity Cloake

I have just made some chocolate mousse for this evening's family gathering, and although I have made it many times before, this time I have stuffed up. It does not look like the beautifully smooth, light and fluffy version above, which it usually does, but it's a bit grainy and lumpy. And I know why now, having looked into the subject.

The recipe I use is from my lovely sister-in-law - here's to you Jenny. It's been bullet proof and yummy for all of my married life. I think I learnt it from Jenny back in the early days of my marriage, when we were still in England. I don't know where she got it from,

but here it is. Just don't do what I did today (read on).

4oz (110g) chocolate

2 dessertspoons sugar

2 eggs

2 dessertspoons cream

Grate chocolate and put into a basin with sugar and egg yolks over hot water.

Beat until smooth

Cool slightly, then add cream

When quite cold fold in stiffly beaten egg whites

Pour into glasses and serve with biscuits

As I have said I have made this many times and it has been perfect. I think the mistake I made today was that, although I started grating the chocolate, this was hard work, and I got impatient, and just broke the rest into pieces - also pretty hard to do I might say. Admittedly I was making three times this quantity - hence the impatience, but still. And I think this is probably why I shall never be a super cook - I'm just too impatient. So anyway it took longer for the chocolate to melt, and therefore the egg yolks began to cook I think. So rather than getting a smooth creamy mixture, I got a rather grainy mass with lumps of chocolate in it. So I whipped it off the heat and beat it hard, but still grainy and still a few small lumps.

There are two things I could have done about this. I could have persisted and grated all the chocolate. When grated it melts almost instantaneously. Or I could have done what lots of the other recipes do - melt the chocolate (and probably the sugar too) first - I could have done this in the microwave - it's very good at melting chocolate, before adding the egg yolks. Now I'm sure it will taste Ok, but just not wonderful. It was definitely not as runny and smooth a mixture this time, even after adding the egg whites.

And although Jenny doesn't specify what kind of sugar, and I did just use granulated ordinary sugar, I should probably have used caster sugar.

So chocolate mousse. Where did it come from?

Well we do think of it as a French thing and indeed it is. And it seems to have come from the French court of Louis XIII in the 17th century, though I think the first recorded recipe dates to the mid 18th century. I wonder who it was who first thought of separating out egg yolks and whites and also who thought of beating the egg whites. It's not an accidental kind of thing is it? It requires some deliberate - and careful - work. If you get any egg yolk at all in the whites you can't beat them up.

Chocolate mousse couldn't have existed much before the 17th century of course, because Europe didn't have chocolate before the 16th century. Mind you mousse (which means foam), can be made with all sorts of other things, so maybe these - sweet and savoury existed before. Why not? Surely there were just as inventive cooks around before the seventeenth century, and surely it didn't take that long to discover that you could separate eggs and whip up egg whites to a stiff foam? I find this a very tantalising question that nobody has really answered on the net. They're all copying each other's answers.

If you want to know about all the various ways you can make a chocolate mousse you can no better than read Felicity Cloake's article (of course). She comes down on the side of Elizabeth David - whose mousse appears in the picture at the top of the page. It's slightly different from Jenny's, so here it is:

"Break 4 oz. (110g) of good quality bitter chocolate into squares and put in a fireproof dish in a low oven. When the chocolate is soft, after a few minutes, take it from the oven, stir in 4 well-beaten yolks, then 1 oz (25g) of softened butter, then the juice of 1 orange. Use a Seville orange when in season; its aromatic flavour comes through better than that of the sweet orange.

Beat the 4 egg whites as for a soufflé and fold them into the chocolate mixture. Pour into little pots, glasses or coffee-cup. This quantity will fill 6. Put in the refrigerator or a cool larder until ready to serve.

Should you have some orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier or Curaçao, add a spoonful in place of the same amount of orange juice."

Twice the number of eggs as in Jenny's recipe, no cream or sugar, but orange juice and butter. I usually add orange juice and/or liqueur but today I added some raspberries and blueberries - just because I had them.

Julia Child, on the other hand adds butter - as do some others. Here is a vintage video of her demonstrating how to make chocolate mousse. Do watch it, it's such fun, but it's long. If you don't want to watch it here, it's on YouTube, so just google julia child chocolate mousse and you will find it. Incidentally I saw, on one website, Julia Child being credited with almost inventing the hand whisk - well revitalising it anyway, which I find really, really hard to believe. There must have been whisks since time immemorial surely? Maybe that should be my next post.

As Felicity Cloake says, there are endless variations on the basic theme which just vary on whether you include, sugar, butter, cream, alcohol and in what proportion the eggs are to the chocolate and everything else, but these are all aiming for a traditional kind of chocolate mousse. But these being the days they are you will also find out there and alarming number of other possibilities - avocado chocolate mousse (no eggs at all - for the vegans) for example, of which even one of its proponents says:

"The idea of avocado chocolate mousse has been popular on the health food scene for years, but some of the recipes out there are unfortunately so awful they only prove true mainstream society’s claim that avocado chocolate mousse is too weird or too healthy to really be dessert." Chocolate Covered Katie

Which, of course, just gives her the chance to give you her 'perfect' version. But really it is in no way a mousse. There are no eggs - and everything is just thrown into a blender. Milk, avocado and chocolate basically. Now how can that be a mousse? A cream maybe but not a mousse.

Felicity Cloake mentions soy sauce, basil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar as being other trendy twists. Really?

No - keep it simple - and either grate your chocolate or don't add the egg yolks until the chocolate has melted. And melt your chocolate in the microwave. And give it a go because it really is very easy and very, very luscious. You don't need a lot.