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I've tried making a red wine mousse to go along with a chocolate mousse. My approach was similar to making the chocolate mousse itself, just with a different core ingredient. I heated up red wine, then beat in small cubes of cold butter one by one until it started to emulsify and then added more butter. Just like a beurre monté but with wine instead of water. I let it cool a bit and whisked in some egg yolk to thicken. Then I folded in egg whites beaten to stiff peaks with sugar and whipped cream and let the mixture set and cool in the fridge.

While the taste is promising, the texture needs a bit of work. The colour however is not at all to my liking. It's kind of a "dirty" red. I added some red dye to the egg whites which made them look appealing but that didn't help much once they were folded into the wine mixture. It would be okay if it was a nice pink, a bright red or some deep burgundy colour, but as it stands now it's just ugly.

What would be a good way to improve the colour? Is the outcome simply a result of wine being mixed into a very fine foam, or is there some chemical reaction with the egg whites? I actually tried adding a splash of red wine to the egg whites prior to beating them (acidity helps with stabilizing them and wine has some acid in it) and to my surprise the colour almost immediately turned into something more akin to blue than red when starting the whipping.

Here's a picture of the outcome. As you can see the red wine mousse looks kind of muddy, for lack of a better word. Kindly ignore my non-existent plating skills, this was just a trial.

Red wine and chocolate mousse

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    It's fairly common to add beet juice to wine sauces to make them a prettier red.
    – FuzzyChef
    Mar 15 at 18:31
  • Thanks for the great advice, everyone. I'll definitely try some of these recommendations. For now I decided not to fight the ingredients and just make whipped cream with red wine as a topping, which has a pleasant pink colour (with the help of a bit of additional food dye). imgur.com/a/fKFgNKU
    – G_H
    Apr 3 at 21:00

2 Answers 2

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Red wine changes colour with pH. It's slightly acidic, more so in younger wines that are a brighter red. Many fruit and veg compounds act as pH indicators, such as those in raspberries and red cabbage.

Egg whites on the other hand are alkaline. Only slightly when they've just been laid, but increasing with storage.

This probably explains your bluish effect from adding wine directly to the egg, and contributes to the muddiness of the red in the mouse.

Using the freshest eggs you can and a young wine should help but a further source of acid might be needed.

I'd still expect the result to be a bit of a dirty red and perhaps pale, but maybe it could be close enough or adjustable with food dye. This is partly dilution of the wine, but mainly the light scattering the makes emulsions look whiter and more opaque than their ingredients. This means saturated colours will be harder to obtain.

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  • Could you use an egg white substitute in the mousse instead, such as aquafaba or something else that has a similar culinary effect, but not the alkalinity?
    – Kialandei
    Mar 16 at 1:02
  • @Kialandei I've never tried substitutes for egg whites, at least not when they're such a major ingredient. They would address the pH issue, but not the light scattering, so they may give a better pink, but would probably affect the flavour
    – Chris H
    Mar 16 at 6:34
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    Could adding a bit of cream of tartar (tartaric acid) help with the ph issues? I know that it helps with the stability of the whipped egg whites, and experience indicates that it is essentially flavor-neutral, so it may be a reasonable step.
    – Xander Henderson
    Mar 16 at 18:52
  • @XanderHenderson it's worth a try, certainly. I was thinking of citric, or the tiniest bit of red wine vinegar
    – Chris H
    Mar 16 at 21:19
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    @ChrisH Oi! A bit of red wine vinegar actually probably makes quite a bit more sense. Tartaric acid seemed appropriate to me, as (1) it is relatively easy to get (citric acid often requires going to a speciality store), (2) it is in powdered form (so no new liquid is being introduced to the recipe), and (3) historically, it is a by-product of wine production, so it seemed to "fit".
    – Xander Henderson
    Mar 16 at 21:29
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I would use beets ground in water thru a blender or robot coupe , then strain thru cheesecloth an sweeten then reduce ,This can bring more depth to your mousse Raw beets do have that “ Dirty “ taste ,You shouldn’t have to use much ,Possibly add beet or a beet simple syrup with dairy or egg whites to infuse color ? Or another solution is using preserves Black cherry would make a great color ,Aged Good Balsamic vinegar ,These ideas have merit in different situations,all can be applied in different mediums,dried pulverized beets ground ,I feel sure that one or a combinations above will have a positive outcome , Research & Development

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    Hi Tiveno – there are a lot of good suggestions here but it's hard to read your answer because it is all over big paragraph with confusing punctuation. You can use the 'Edit' option underneath the answer if you want to improve the readability.
    – dbmag9
    Mar 16 at 9:22
  • The wine actually already has enough bright red pigments, they just turn blue-purple on contact with the egg whites, and in combination with the yellow egg yolks and the butter, the result is brownish (see Chris H's answer). Adding beets or black cherry preserves won't help, because their pigments will also turn blueish. The balsamic vinegar is more brown than red.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Mar 16 at 20:15
  • @rumtscho betanin retains a red shade to higher pH values than the anthocyanines from wine (or cherries). And vinegar (or cherries) would prevent the pH from going alkaline in the first place. So, yes, the suggestions would in fact work. All of these have side-effects though that may make it worse.
    – leftaroundabout
    Mar 16 at 22:42

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