posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie at 10:56am on 12/11/2006
selkie at 10:56am on 12/11/2006Does anybody on Epicurious actually test the recipes before they go live? Or at the magazines, either.
I am trying (I tried?) to make a mousse, and the first step after blooming the gelatine called for bringing egg yolks, sugar and the gelatine to 160 degrees in a double boiler, presumably to pasteurize the eggs.
I know gelatine can withstand -- even needs -- the heat of boiling liquid to get it going. But a sustained exposure to heat in a fairly dry mixture, including white sugar, which can get rocket hot for the size of its particles? Yeah, that was somebody's good theory and bad practice. My eggs didn't curdle, because I'm fairly skilled at double-boilering. The gelatine, however, mostly ended in raggedy strands along the whisk.
So let's see if that mousse sets, shall we?
If it fails, I'm going to write a stern letter to their Department of Custards, because this will be the second custard-based recipe I've made off Epi that ended up being a flush down the pan. (The first was the chai pots de creme, in my mercifully brief mid-collegiate mod phase.)
I am trying (I tried?) to make a mousse, and the first step after blooming the gelatine called for bringing egg yolks, sugar and the gelatine to 160 degrees in a double boiler, presumably to pasteurize the eggs.
I know gelatine can withstand -- even needs -- the heat of boiling liquid to get it going. But a sustained exposure to heat in a fairly dry mixture, including white sugar, which can get rocket hot for the size of its particles? Yeah, that was somebody's good theory and bad practice. My eggs didn't curdle, because I'm fairly skilled at double-boilering. The gelatine, however, mostly ended in raggedy strands along the whisk.
So let's see if that mousse sets, shall we?
If it fails, I'm going to write a stern letter to their Department of Custards, because this will be the second custard-based recipe I've made off Epi that ended up being a flush down the pan. (The first was the chai pots de creme, in my mercifully brief mid-collegiate mod phase.)