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Dessert

Fruit Mousse

A chilled dessert made with fruit juice, sugar, egg yolks, gelatin, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fruit Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Prepare 1 pint of any fruit juice and set aside.

Make the mousse

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs and mix in half the sugar.

  2. Add the fruit juice and remaining sugar to the egg mixture.

  3. Strain into a pan and set in a dish of ice or snow.

  4. Dissolve the gelatin in a little boiling water and strain into the mixture.

  5. Stir constantly until it begins to thicken, then fold in the whipped cream.

Chill

  1. Fill a mold, pack in ice and salt, and let stand for 3 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the mousse as it cools, giving it a firm but airy body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the base into a smooth custard.
Cream
Whipped in at the end, it adds lightness and a soft, creamy texture.
Fruit juice
Provides the main flavour and moisture of the mousse.
Sugar
Sweetens the mousse and balances the fruit juice.

The step that matters

Stir constantly as it thickens. Gelatine sets as it cools, so stirring keeps it evenly dispersed and prevents lumps or uneven setting before the whipped cream is folded in.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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