Mousseline ... What is it really?

[Rozin Abbas]

Part of the fun I have been having is discovering all the kinds of buttercream that exist and that have been officially labelled in some form or another.

Through my google search, I saw what Gisslen in Professional Baking calls "Pastry cream-type buttercream" come to be known as German buttercream (Brave Tart does this, for example) while others called it creme mousseline or mousseline buttercream. The German part didn't really baffle me so much as the mousseline.

In both Friberg's text (mousseline sauce) and Gisslen's (he calls it pastry cream mousseline), mousseline is essentially pastry cream with whipped cream added (Martha Stewart is the same). Yet multiple blogs (especially french ones) refer to a "traditional creme mousseline" as pastry cream with butter added (this is Gisslen's Pastry cream-type buttercream or what Brave Tart calls German Buttercream).

I just like to know this kind of stuff for the sake of knowing. Is creme mousseline just really another type of buttercream and another name for german buttercream or pastry cream-type buttercream or is it pastry cream lightened with whipped cream? Or is the former creme mousseline and the latter merely mousseline?

Funny enough, Rose Levy calls an Italian Meringue Buttercream a Mousseline in Heavenly Cakes, which explains why some blogs think an IMBC = Mousseline.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Rozin Abbas (log)

[Alleguede]

Mousseline is a pastry cream with butter added to it. It is the cream used traditionally for the fraisier, framboisier, eventually also the Paris Brest... It stays a solid but soft type of cream, flavored with vanilla or kirsch or praline... I like to use it for big cakes its not as heavy as real buttercream.

It is not a buttercream in itself I think, instead of being part of the buttercream family I would more see it as a derived cream from the pastry cream such as chiboust, diplomate,...

[Mjx]

My understanding is that the term may be applied to any cream or sauce with a light, mousse-like consistency, savoury or sweet; unless 'mousseline' is actually part of a name, it doesn't identify any unique, specific entitly, it's applied to many different things.

[Rozin Abbas]

Mousseline is a pastry cream with butter added to it. It is the cream used traditionally for the fraisier, framboisier, eventually also the Paris Brest... It stays a solid but soft type of cream, flavored with vanilla or kirsch or praline... I like to use it for big cakes its not as heavy as real buttercream.

It is not a buttercream in itself I think, instead of being part of the buttercream family I would more see it as a derived cream from the pastry cream such as chiboust, diplomate,...

Interesting. I suppose, maybe, the American pastry scene eventually classified it as a "buttercream"

My understanding is that the term may be applied to any cream or sauce with a light, mousse-like consistency, savoury or sweet; unless 'mousseline' is actually part of a name, it doesn't identify any unique, specific entitly, it's applied to many different things.

I think you're right. After you posted this, I went ahead and used my access to the Oxford English Dictionary (yay for being a University alum) and typed in mousseline. Their definition:

"A small mousse, or one with a soft or light texture."

Though, a CREME mousseline may be in line with what Alleguede posted.

[AnnieWilliams]

I've always seen it as pastry cream with butter whipped in. The amounts and proportions vary by recipe.

Technically it is a buttercream, since it's butter and cream, but not in the traditional sense (as used for cake icing).

[JeanneCake]

I think it might have been RLB who popularized the use of the word "mousseline" in naming her IMBC when The Cake Bible was published in 1988 and that may be when a lot of people started calling IMBC a mousseline buttercream and it's just become part of the vernacular after 20 or so years.

[AnnieWilliams]

Yes Jeanne I totally agree. Although I prefer her Neoclassical recipe better.

[furzzy]

Funny, I normally think first of savory...fish mousseline quenelles? But then, I was culinary, not patisserie.