Other forms: mousses
A mousse is a light airy dessert full of whipped bubbles. Chocolate mousse, a lemon mousse, set the mousse.
The air comes from whipped egg white or cream, and the whole difficulty is keeping it in — folding rather than stirring is the technique. Savoury mousses exist too: a salmon mousse. In hair products, mousse is the foam used for volume, named for the same reason. Note the pronunciation, which is moose; and that mousse and moose sound identical and mean nothing alike.
1nounmousseA light airy dessert full of whipped bubbles.
“For dessert we had a light lemon mousse served in little glasses.”
2nounfoamA foam used on hair.
“She rubbed a little mousse into her hair to give it more volume.”
mousse is a foam or dessert.
French mousse means foam or froth, and it comes from a word for moss — the same root as the English moss. The dessert is named after something growing on a damp wall, which is a considerable improvement in the marketing.
Proto-Germanic
*musą — moss, bog, marsh
Old Dutch
*mosa — moss
Old French
mosse — moss
French
mousse — foam, froth
English, today
mousse
From French mousse (“foam, froth”), from Old French mosse (“moss”), from Frankish - or Old Dutch mosa (“moss”), from Proto-Germanic musą (“moss, bog, marsh”). More at moss.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Food & Drink, Hair & Grooming