I Tried Paris’ Most Indulgent Chocolate Mousse

Today, we're in Paris, France, to learn everything about chocolate mousse. Chocolate mousse is one of the most iconic desserts in French cuisine, one that is made with very simple ingredients, only three, in fact, chocolate, of course, and then egg whites and sugar, but one whose flavors can actually change so much depending on which chocolate you're using. And today, I'm very happy to be visiting Chocolaterie Charbon here in Chelles, 15 minutes away from Paris, so we're still in Paris. I'm cheating. We're gonna learn everything about how the cacao bean actually turns into chocolate and then turns into chocolate mousse. Charbon is a historic chocolaterie in Paris founded by Patrice Charbon in 1986. Today, Charbon has 19 shops around Paris and around 50 chocolate bars made with cacao from 25 countries. Wow. At Charbon, mousse is treated almost like ice cream, using cacao from different origins, but not every bean works for mousse. It depends on its genetics, fat content, and processing. So to understand how Charbon's mousse is made, we need to go back to the raw ingredient, the cacao bean. So the beans arrive like this, in these bags, and they're really sorted by hand. There's no machine to do this. The best tool is the hands and the eyes. And so it's really done with the sieve. You see, there's already a first part that falls. And then she's going to analyze them all. And here, for example, you have little things that have already been sorted. So why do we sort? Quite simply because sometimes there are little debris. There are beans that are broken or damaged. Or quite simply, I don't see any, but from time to time there are little pieces of branching, there are pieces of leafing, little pebbles too. It takes around an hour and a half to sort just one bag here. After, second step, sorting. So here we're changing beans. Here we're sorting Ecuador beans. So I'm going to show you. So this is a coffee sorter, that you may know. So there's one here, there's another one there. So here on Ecuador, we're for 40 minutes, between 74 and 90 degrees, more or less. It's hot, isn't it? Yeah, it's hot. You see, look, it's beautiful, isn't it? Yes, because the quality... And now you can taste it. Out, out of the... When it comes out, it's incredible. I could eat that all the time. I love a little bit of acidity. So once it's sorted, the bean will already behave a little differently. It will be slightly inflated and the skin will already start to peel off a bit. After that, the third part, it's going to be this machine called a cacao tarar. Here we're going to put... He's putting the beans inside. Look, this is the bean that has already been sautéed. And here, what we want is to compress it and remove the skin. We could do it by hand, but you see, you could... You see, there's the skin that needs to be removed. And what I want to get back is this. It's the pressed part? No, it's the crushed part. It's the crushed part. The crushed part is the bean that has been crushed. So it's going to be crushed, shaken, crushed. And then we have the crushed part that falls with different granules. That's our treasure. Do you want to taste it? Of course! It's our great treasure. We're going to use it to make our chocolate sweets, our tablets, and the mousse. Each step is important. If you make a mistake in the preparation, if you leave it in the fridge, or not enough. So it's really a precision work. And we adapt to each... It's not going to be exactly the same work. But it's not just cacao beans being processed here. Chapon also works with almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios to make its spreads, and of course, the fillings for its chocolates. We're going to mix it for several hours until we get this incredible texture that fills our sweets. Incredible! It's still hot. The praline is slightly sweet, but you can see that the dosage is perfect. Nothing crushes the aromatic power of the hazelnut. I know you want to see the mousse, but first we need to pass through the room where Chapon's bonbons are coated in chocolate. Don't mind me if I do some quality checks as I go. That's really regressive. Do you like it? I really like this one. And then it's coated in... So this is a hazelnut almond praline, with... You know, the praline... So with Chapon, the praline has a particularity. It has a granularity that's much thicker than what you can find in the shops. It's thanks to the device you saw earlier, the two granite molds. It's thanks to this that you can get this quality of grain that's really special. And then they go through here, they cool down. So you can see they're well-coated. The idea is not to have any defects on the top, no small droplets, no waves, so that it's perfect. And now, you see, they're coming out. And this goes straight to the shops afterwards. And so now you're going to taste it with the coating. Oh, you see the defect, there you go. There you go. So this one, they've removed the trimmings as well. She's still working on the trimmings. There, they've stuck together because it can happen. So that's a defect as well. So once again, you're going to have to eat the defect. It's for you. Yes, I'm going to do... I'm going to document how many days. I'm going to eat it. Usually, we paint people before they come, and then we put them back on when they come out. So these are the trimmings, what we call the trimmings. It's like our chocolate sweets, but much bigger in size. It's much tastier. And that's a specialty of ours. So this machine here, it's the most sophisticated machine in the house. So this is what we call the one-shot. It's going to do the outside of the candy and the inside at the same time. That's why it's called one-shot. So this is one of our signature chocolates. So it's a nougatine cup with a pistachio praline with smoked salt. This is the mousse room. Here, sugar and egg whites are mixed with the finished chocolate from the production room. We're going to see how many bowls. How many? Fifteen. In the mousse, there's only chocolate. Yes, and eggs. It's the same recipe that you make, but we use our chocolate, and we do it on a large scale. Everything is done by hand. This part here, we're often told, why don't you make it with a machine? This is where it's going to be impressive. So look. It's really a mixture of egg whites and egg yolks. It's incredible, isn't it? Yes. You could never find it in the store. No, because he mixes it depending on how it's produced. Yes. This method works. There are no stains. This method works well. There are no stains. It's clean, look. And then it goes to the shop. It's all fresh, so it takes some time. So that's chocolate mousse. There's no cooking. No, there's no cooking. No, no. It's prepared in advance, it's better. What kind of mousse is this? Madagascar. It's quite light, you see. It's always lighter, but that doesn't mean anything. Sometimes the light results can be as powerful aromatically as a bean that looks darker. You shouldn't trust... So it's good, it's pretty, but you have to trust the palette and the taste. I thought you put more white, but that's not the case. No, no. It's the bean. It's the chocolate that's at the base. The bean is already lighter. Here, open up. Yes, even if it's a light color, it's... Now we're on a 75% cocoa. So this Madagascar mousse, it's as good for adults as it is for children. It's really a mousse that's quite consensual. And I really like it when people tell me they want something that's not too strong, but that still smells good, that still has a nice aromatic palette. I think the Madagascar is just perfect. So this is chocolate. The base of the chocolate is milk? No, it's... So actually, for the ganache, we added a little bit of milk. There you go. We added a little bit of milk. It helps to balance the recipe. There you go. To balance the recipe. And here, you can really feel the whole aromatic palette of the Madagascar. You can feel it. It's very red fruit. I find it very fruity. And it's really nice. And we really have a nice mouthfeel that we're going to find in mousse. Obviously, the texture is soft, very pleasant, it's very greedy. But what's very interesting here, and that's what we do in the shops, we also try to make our customers who taste the Madagascar, taste the Madagascar on a tablet. You really have to have both conditions, that is, the soft texture, very, very... back to childhood, very regressive, of the mousse, but also the tablet. And on both, so it's two different textures, but we have the same landmarks in terms of the aromatic palette. We're going to find the same fruity notes whether it's on a tablet or in mousse. Chabon makes around 300 bowls of mousse a day. Some locations alone go through 40 to 50 bowls every day. After they're filled, the bowls chill for around 24 hours before going to the shops. It's interesting to taste the smell. Yes, exactly. But you still have the dominant taste, the aromatic palette remains the same. Depending on the region, we're going to see particular characteristics. We know that Madagascar is very often, as you can see, something very fruity, very round in the mouth, with a nice length, sweetness. Then we have things a little more powerful, aromatically speaking, with a little more coarse aromas. I really like Ecuador too, which has this slightly spiced side. I like the acidity points in a chocolate. I love when a chocolate has relief. What I call relief is that you taste, you have a first mouth, and you have other notes coming from above, and you say to yourself, but it's incredible, I hadn't felt that. And there, in retro-olfaction, you see, in the second mouth, really, you sometimes have notes that appear, and that's what's extraordinary. In chocolate, it moves all the time. So now I'm going to make you taste the Chuao. It's a bean that comes from Venezuela, in a very small village, with an incredible genetic. Very small production, but incredible. All the chocolatiers fight to have a few beans. We are lucky to have a large part of their production. So I'm going to make you taste it. There you go. It's a treat. There's a slightly spicy side, actually. A little. At the end, maybe. There's a little point, a little pep. Yes. I like it a lot. And you see, you feel it. You have a first note. And then, in the second mouth, you have other shades that come back on top. It's really an aromatic palette that's very complex, but that's just incredible. I like it a lot. And you have it in your mouth for a long time. You see, it's a very, very nice length in the mouth. You have to have fun. You can taste things, but it has to be fun. It doesn't have to be too academic. We're not teachers. We're here to share our knowledge, and our desires, and to make people discover things. That's also our job. Yes. Oh, I'm so happy. Oh, that's good. That's good. Here we are with our barramus. Very close. I may have another cone after I shoot this. What can I say? I really loved this, especially the fact that having this barramus and having so much choice actually makes you curious about the provenance of the cacao bean. You can really taste the difference between different beans and where they're from. And also, you can taste this difference in the mousse. And it's very nice actually when you understand the origins of things through the final product. The final product becomes not so much of a transformation, but actually a continuation of that origin and of that original flavor. Of course, there is the play, the creative play of the chocolatier here at Chapon, as Christine has explained to us. But, yeah, the amazing thing for me was really that there was really a continuation and I could really taste the flavors and how they evolved. An evolution, more than that. A continuation. You take your pick. Thank you so much for watching. And to show me that you made it to the end, comment below with your favorite chocolate dessert, wherever that is from. And in particular one, like this chocolate mousse that is very dear to you, where you can really taste the evolution of the ingredients and the evolution of the flavors. If you can't think of any that is that complicated and deep, it's fine. Your favorite chocolate dessert will do. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in my next video. Bye.