Today is National Mousse Day

You can thank the inventor of the electric mixer — Herbert Johnson in 1908, although the first hand-held mixer, the Sunbeam MixMaster wasn’t introduced for 44 more years — for helping to make the mousse a popular dessert in America.

Sure, there were variations on the mousse — French for foam — in the United States long before the MixMaster. A recipe for a pudding-like concoction called chocolate mousse was published in the Boston Daily Globe in 1897.

The introduction of whipped egg whites and, later, the hand-held mixer gave even untrained home cooks the confidence to create a confection that only upscale restaurants — the continental variety — were serving.