Mousselines de Jambon à la Florentine

Mousselines de Jambon à la Florentine (silken ham mousselines on buttered spinach) teaches the discipline of temperature. The ham, egg whites, cream, bowl, and blade must stay cold, or the forcemeat loses its fine emulsion before it ever reaches the poaching water. Keep it cold and the individual moulds set tender, not bouncy, against spinach fried in butter and a glossy coat of sauce Allemande.

The book sends its sauce work to the preparation used for Mousselines Alexandra. A grand kitchen had a saucier on staff, velouté drawn from stock never off the fire, and a salamander waiting to glaze each order. Here the mortar and tamis become a food processor and fine sieve, the service batch becomes four ramekins, the stockpot becomes a careful small velouté, and the salamander becomes your broiler. The separate sauce station is brigade scaffolding and can go. The cold forcemeat, gentle poach, dry buttered spinach, sauce Allemande, and fast glaze are the dish, so they stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

If the emulsion warms, chill it and bring it back with cold cream. If the liaison threatens to curdle, take it off the heat at once. Ça se rattrape. At the finish, glaze only long enough to colour the Parmesan, but the decisive work happens first: keep the forcemeat cold.