Mousse de Foie Gras

Mousse de Foie Gras (chilled foie gras mousse) teaches the grammar of every cold savoury mousse: a smooth thickened base, gelatine, and cream folded in before the mixture sets. The one true thing to know before touching a pan is this: whip the cream only halfway. Stiffly whipped cream makes the finished mousse dry and woolly; barely whipped cream leaves it cool, supple, and unctuous.

The original kitchen assumed a saucier with velouté always ready, a garde-manger, the cold-kitchen station, to clothe and decorate the mould, and a silver timbale held in broken ice through service. Here, one home-scale batch fills a 2-cup mould, a fine-mesh sieve replaces the tammy, and the refrigerator replaces the ice-encrusted timbale. The silver display and brigade quantity are scaffolding and can go. The thickened base, half-whipped cream, gelatine, and thin jelly clothing are the dish, so they stay.

When it is right, the mousse turns out with a clear, delicate gloss over a pale, perfectly smooth interior that yields softly to the knife. One cook, one stove, one evening, followed by a patient chill. Watch the cream before anything else: it must fall from the whisk in a soft fold, not stand at attention.