Skip to main content
Dessert

Mousse with Chopped Nuts

A chilled cream mousse folded with chopped nuts, sweetened with powdered sugar and vanilla, and set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mousse with Chopped Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

  1. Stir powdered sugar into cream until dissolved.

  2. Add vanilla extract.

  3. Add sherry.

  4. Whip mixture well.

  5. Skim off froth as it rises.

  6. Drain froth on a sieve.

  7. Return liquid cream to the bowl.

  8. Continue whipping.

  9. Continue skimming until no more froth rises.

  10. Let whipped cream stand for 10 minutes.

  11. Gently fold in chopped nuts.

Mould and chill

  1. Transfer mixture into a mold.

  2. Cover mold with waxed paper.

  3. Seal mold with a strip of muslin dipped in melted butter.

  4. Pack mold in ice and salt for 2 to 3 hours, depending on thickness.

Unmould and serve

  1. Remove mold from ice.

  2. Wipe mold with a cloth.

  3. Dip mold briefly in warm water.

  4. Turn out mousse onto a dish.

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. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped into a light foam that gives the mousse its airy, creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the cream to sweeten it and adds a smooth texture.
Finely chopped nuts
Add flavour and a slightly firm texture to the set mousse.
Sherry
Adds a mild acidic, aromatic flavour to the cream.

The step that matters

Skim off the froth and drain it on a sieve. Removing the froth as it forms, then whipping and skimming until none rises, keeps the cream from collapsing and leaves a smoother, more stable mousse once chilled.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, vanilla, sherry, almond, walnut, butter):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla, sherry, almond, walnut, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipes