Mousse de Maracujá

Brazil's best-loved dessert in three ingredients: passion fruit pulp whipped with condensed milk and cream into a pale, silky mousse, finished with a spoonful of raw seeded pulp

Origin: Brazil

From the journey of Passion Fruit.

If one dessert can be said to belong to every Brazilian household, it is the mousse de maracujá. It rests on the same principle as a whole family of Brazilian sweets (the brigadeiro, the pudim de leite condensado, the mousse de limão): the tin of sweetened condensed milk, which arrived with industrial dairying in the early twentieth century and became the foundation of the national sweet kitchen. Here it meets the country's own fruit. Brazil is by a wide margin the largest grower of passion fruit on earth and, unusually for a tropical crop, keeps almost all of it at home, and the maracujá's extreme, almost aggressive acidity is exactly what the very sweet condensed milk requires. Blended together with cream, the two collapse into one another and set, without gelatine in the simplest versions, into a pale yellow mousse of remarkable silkiness that is at once intensely sweet and bracingly sharp. It is made in minutes in a blender, chilled, and finished with a spoonful of raw pulp so that the black seeds crackle against the smooth cream. Served at birthdays, at Sunday lunches, and at every churrasco, it is the taste of the Brazilian table.

Ingredients

Mousse

250 ml passion fruit pulp, sieved (from about 10 to 12 passion fruit)
395 g sweetened condensed milk (1 tin)
300 ml double cream (or 1 tin table cream)
1 tbsp powdered gelatine, optional, for a firmer set

To Finish

3 tbsp passion fruit pulp with seeds, to finish

Method

Halve the passion fruit and scoop the pulp into a sieve set over a bowl. Press and stir with a spoon to extract the juice, leaving the seeds behind. You want about 250 ml of smooth, seedless pulp; reserve a few spoonfuls of unsieved pulp with its seeds for the top.
Put the sieved pulp, the condensed milk, and the cream in a blender and blend for about a minute, until completely smooth, pale, and slightly thickened.
If you want a firmer, more sliceable mousse, sprinkle the gelatine over 4 tbsp cold water, leave for 5 minutes to swell, then melt gently and blend it in briefly at the end.
Pour into a serving bowl or into individual glasses and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or overnight, until set and cold.
Just before serving, spoon the reserved seeded pulp over the top so the black seeds glisten against the pale mousse.

Notes

The proportions are forgiving and every family has its own: more pulp gives a sharper, looser mousse, more condensed milk a sweeter, denser one. Taste the mixture before chilling and adjust, remembering that chilling dulls both sweetness and acidity a little. The same three-ingredient method makes mousse de limão with lime juice and mousse de manga with mango. A layer of crushed biscuit in the base of the glasses turns it into a simple pavê.

The Gastrographer

Name: Mousse de Maracujá
Prep time: 15 min
Total time: 4 h 15 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Brazil
Ingredients: 250 ml passion fruit pulp, sieved (from about 10 to 12 passion fruit); 395 g sweetened condensed milk (1 tin); 300 ml double cream (or 1 tin table cream); 1 tbsp powdered gelatine, optional, for a firmer set; 3 tbsp passion fruit pulp with seeds, to finish

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control