Pudding – maybe my favourite ever – arrived in two bowls. The first was glass and filled to the brim with chocolate mousse. The second, of white, fluted plastic, was twice the size of the first and full of whipped cream. Both were put on the living room sideboard along with a pile of plates and a remarkable selection of spoons: tea, soup, table, plastic, serving. Also a few forks and what seemed to be a catering ladle, which someone decided was the best thing for the cream. So in a small flat filled with dozens and dozens of people under a light covered with tissue paper, we all helped ourselves to mousse and large amounts of cream that required flicking to get it out of the ladle.
In his book On Food And Cooking, Harold McGee notes: “The full foaming power of egg white seems to have burst forth in the early 17th century.” Of course, eggs’ ability to foam was known long before this, but the extent of foaming was no doubt limited by tools, or the lack of them. Then “sometime around 1650, cooks began to use more efficient whisks, of twigs or bundled straw”.
