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Patties
Have ready some fine puff paste, put in the ice chest to get firm, then roll about three-quarters of an inch in thickness. Have the pastry rolled equally thick; cut with a round cutter three and a half inches in diameter, and put in the pans; use another cutter two and a half inches in diameter, dip it in hot water, place in the center of the patty, and cut about twothirds through. The center pieces are to form the covers, and separate very easily from the rest when baked. Put in a very hot oven; after baking ten minutes reduce the heat, then bake fifteen minutes longer. Remove from the oven and take out the center pieces, and scrape out the uncooked paste with a knife or spoon. Fill with the meat, put on the covers and serve.
This is the shell only — a vol-au-vent case built from puff paste, meant to be filled with one of the creamed meat mixtures elsewhere in the chapter. The whole trick is the second cutter, which scores a lid without severing it.
- The hinge: cut two-thirds, not throughThe inner circle must be scored about two-thirds of the way down, leaving the base intact. Cut all the way through and you get a ring that collapses; cut too shallow and the lid will not lift free after baking.
- Dip the cutter in hot waterThe usual explanation is that a hot cutter slices cleanly through the cold butter layers instead of dragging and smearing them, and that it sets the cut edge enough for the lid to separate after baking. Re-dip between cuts and wipe the cutter dry-ish so you are not adding water to the dough.
- "Very hot oven" then reducedThe book gives no figures. A period "very hot" oven is usually taken as somewhere around 450°F, hot enough for the initial steam lift; the reduction is left to judgement, a moderate oven being the obvious reading, for the remaining fifteen minutes. Total baking time as written is 25 minutes.
- Three-quarters of an inch is correctThat sounds thick by modern habit, but a patty case needs the depth to have anything to hollow out. Rolling to a quarter inch gives you a flat disc with no cavity.
- "Put in the pans"The pans are not described; this may mean baking pans, though small patty tins were also standard equipment. Either way a cold, heavy sheet (parchment-lined) helps the bases hold their shape.
- Keep everything coldThe ice chest is the modern refrigerator, and the instruction is not optional. If the dough softens while you are cutting, chill the cut shells for 20–30 minutes before they go in the oven, or the layers will slump rather than rise.
- Puff paste is not made hereThe book assumes you have it from another page. Commercial all-butter puff pastry can be substituted, but it will need to be built up substantially to reach the specified three-quarter-inch thickness.
- Yield and servingA 3½-inch cutter gives shells for a first course or luncheon dish, one or two per person. Fill them just before serving — a creamed filling standing in the shell will soften the base within minutes.
The patty of this period is a small case of puff paste hollowed out and filled with something creamed and savoury — sweetbreads, chicken, oysters, lobster — closely related to the French vol-au-vent, though the vol-au-vent proper is the larger single case. The word is generally traced to the French pâté, and in earlier English usage a "patty" was simply a small enclosed pastry rather than the flat cake of meat the word now means in America. Late nineteenth-century American cookbooks give it a whole subsection alongside croquettes and rissoles because both solved the same domestic problem: turning small quantities of cooked meat into something that could be sent to table as a proper course.