From the children's section

I bring you chocolate mousse

Last week I said I would try to replicate the chocolate mousse I ate on a recent trip to London. It was just one of three desserts on the hand written menu at The French House, alongside warm madeleines and a selection of cheese. The restaurant itself is a small, burgundy-walled room above a boisterous pub. The night we were there the sun set slowly through the evening. A Union Jack gently flapped outside an open window and the sounds of the Soho street below mingled with soft music. Tables were dressed in white linens but the space was comfortable and welcoming. The chocolate mousse arrived at the table on a simple metal plate (after those asparagus and platters of family style roast pork, dover sole and very good french fries). The mousse was topped with a sprinkling of crushed chocolate biscuits and a little quenelle of crème frâiche. I couldn’t have been happier.

I began my chocolate mousse mission on Monday by sleuthing around for the recipe. The closest I could get was an article in The Standard from February 2023 where The French House’s Neil Borthwisk (husband to the Michelin-starred chef Angela Harnett) was quoted as saying their chocolate mousse is “pretty good” and made up of just “cooked Italian Meringue, Pump Street Chocolate (an English bean-to-bar brand) and whipping cream. That’s it.”¹ Ah ha. Italian Meringue, how unique. This version avoids raw egg yolks while a hot sugar syrup cooks the whites. It would require a thermometer, if I remembered correctly, and knowledge of what an Italian meringue is, exactly.

On Tuesday I read up on Italian meringues. All meringues are made with just egg whites and sugar (and sometimes a touch of acid, like lemon juice or cream of tartar for stability). When whites are whipped, proteins unfold, stretch and bond with air bubbles. As they continue to whip, this bond gets thinner, the bubbles get smaller, and the texture shifts from foamy to stiff. In a French meringue, sugar is slowly added to egg whites as they whip until the mixture is glossy. In a Swiss meringue, egg whites and sugar are gently heated before they’re whipped together. In an Italian meringue, sugar and water are cooked together to make a hot syrup that is then whisked into room temperature egg whites. Italian meringue is said to be the most stable of meringues. It’s less likely to collapse, it won’t weep pearls of water as sometimes happens when the whites are too stiff. And it’s smooth, shiny and glossy. “A lovechild,” writes Serious Eats,² “of marshmallow and whipped cream.” When this lovechild is combined with fine melted chocolate and a pillow of whipped cream, the result is a texture and flavour sensation - a delicious structure that holds the frothy bubbles - or the mousse, as the French would say.

On Wednesday I watched a younger Jacques Pépin³ demo a chocolate Italian meringue mousse on Youtube. There were several pots, bowls, a hand blender, an ice bath and talk of sugar syrup temperatures in the 240F /115C range. Instead of melting chocolate over a double boiler, he vigorously whisked hot espresso with cocoa powder and gelatin (used instead of egg yolks, I’m assuming, as the thickening agent.) I rummaged around my kitchen for a candy thermometer. Instead I found my old measuring tape. A lost grapefruit spoon. A ski pass belonging to my son from 2016. But no candy thermometer.

On Thursday I cracked open Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julia makes chocolate mousse by whisking egg yolks and sugar together until the mixture falls “back upon itself forming a slowly dissolving ribbon.” Then the mixture is whisked for 3-4 minutes more over a pan of barely simmering water. It is then beaten again over cold water for 3-4 minutes over cold water until the mixture is the consistency of mayonnaise. I didn’t make it to the instructions on the following page for beating melted chocolate and butter into the thick egg mixture, not to mention the French meringue stage that slowly gets folded into the chocolate mixture or the separate recipe for crème anglaise that is served with the chocolate mousse.

I understand the steps for all these recipes guarantee proper protein stretching and air bubble bonding. I could use a little structure in this house. Builders have just pulled out of the driveway after almost a year of renovations. All boys are back in the house for the summer. There’s a fine layer of plaster dust on every surface, including the tea cups inside the cupboard. And just this afternoon our brown paper compost bag slumped under the pressure of its weight and tipped forward into the opened racks of the dishwasher. Coffee grounds, onion skins, and last week’s butter chicken slopped over the freshly cleaned tea cups that occupied the top rack. At times like this I like to crank open the ironing board and iron the most wrinkled shirt in the house, just to find a little structure in my life. It’s not when I typically make a multi-step, temperature dependant chocolate mousse.

On Thursday night, in a panic, I reached for Nigella Lawson’s seminal book, How To Eat. I knew there was a simple chocolate mousse recipe included deep within, despite the fact that she doesn’t like puddings. She calls it An Exception: Children’s Chocolate Mousse, for those times when what she’s serving adults is “too bitter, too rich, too alcoholic or otherwise unappealing for the children or I just want to make something that will bludgeon them sweetly into sugar-absorbed silence.” Nigella says she and just about everyone else likes this recipe more than “elegant adult versions,” so suggests doubling the quantities. So that’s what I did.

Today, Friday, I laid out the twice-washed teacups on the counter. I made coffee and a pot of tea. I snipped a branch from our crabapple tree. I put out cheese, sliced a baguette and green grapes. Friends came in out of the rain and we gathered around the kitchen island to catch up on life. And then, when only a few were remaining, I remembered that I had children’s chocolate mousse chilling in the fridge. I crushed a few Oreos and sprinkled them over top and we each ate a big spoonful with our last sips of coffee. It was light, airy, deeply chocolatey, and easy.

Structure was restored.

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To make Nigella’s Children’s Chocolate Mousse, crack open a copy of How to Eat then turn to the section on feeding babies and small children, p493. The recipe can also be found all over the internet, so in the hopes of not breaking the rules, I’ve outlined it below.

Put 200g of chopped dark chocolate⁴ in a metal bowl with 3 tablespoons of water and 2 tablespoons of golden (corn) syrup and place it over a saucepan of barely simmering water. When the chocolate has melted, give it a good stir and take the bowl off the heat. Separate the eggs and whisk the whites in a clean bowl until stiff. One by one whisk the yolks into the chocolate mixture. The mixture will be dense at this point, so Nigella says to take a “dollop of egg whites and briskly, brutally even, stir them into the egg-yolky chocolate.” The mixture will be fluffier at this point (suspended, as we know, with tiny bubbles) making it easier to receive the rest of the whites. Fold in the remaining egg whites, one spoonful at a time, not brutally but gently to keep everything as airy as possible. Covered the mousse with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight.

1. Read the story in The Standard, here.

2. Serious Eats goes deep on Italian Meringue

3. Jacques Pépin demonstates how to make a chocolate Italian meringue mousse - Facebook might be required for this one?

4. The type of chocolate is very important here, so use your best. Nigella calls for 40% cocoa solids in her chocolate mousse which makes for a sweeter, milk chocolate mousse. I used Chocosol’s 75% dark chocolate.