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FISH (vol-au-vent)
Make a puff paste; roll it out about one inch and a quarter thick, and then cut it to the desired size with a tin-cutter. Make an incision all round, an inch from the edge, with a small sharp knife, or better still with a tin-cutter, if one of the size be at hand. Bake on a tin pan in a quick oven. When done, nicely egged over, and of a pale brown colour, cut out the centre paste without breaking the edge, and fill the vacant place with a fricassee of fish, oysters, lobster, etc. Serve the vol-au-vent on a folded napkin. Time to bake, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, puff paste, 1s. 6d, per pound.
A method rather than a fixed formula: the case is the recipe, and the filling is left to the cook. Two things in the Victorian text will mislead a modern baker — the egg wash and the baking time.
- Egg the pastry before baking, not afterThe instruction reads as though the case is glazed once cooked; in practice the beaten egg goes on the top surface only, before it enters the oven, and must be kept off the cut edges. Egg dripping down the sides glues the layers together and the vol-au-vent rises lopsided or not at all.
- "A quick oven"Generally reckoned somewhere around 400-450F. Puff paste needs the initial blast to turn its water into steam and drive the layers apart; a moderate oven melts the butter out before the lift happens.
- Three-quarters of an hour is too longThree-quarters of an hour is probably longer than a modern oven needs -- a case of this size will likely be done well before the hour is up, perhaps in 30-40 minutes: start hot, then drop to about 375F once it has risen and set, and pull it when the sides are dry and firm rather than merely coloured.
- Thickness and cuttingAn inch and a quarter of raw paste looks alarming, but it is meant to rise a good deal in the oven. If you are using bought all-butter puff, which comes rolled at about an eighth of an inch, stack several layers of cut rounds (brushed with water, not egg, between) rather than trying to roll one sheet thick -- noting that three or four layers will fall well short of the thickness the recipe asks for. Cut straight down with a floured cutter; a twisting cut seals the edge and kills the rise.
- The inner incisionScore about a third of the way down, not through. This ring becomes the lid. Chill the cut case for 30 minutes before baking so the butter is firm and the walls go up straight.
- Scooping out the centreLift the lid off while the case is still warm and scrape out the soft, underbaked crumb inside with a spoon. If the interior seems damp, return the empty case to the oven for five minutes to dry.
- The fillingA fricassee here means fish, oysters or picked lobster bound in a thick velouté or white sauce — thick enough to hold a spoon mark, or it will soak through the base within minutes. Fill only at the moment of serving, and cook oysters no more than a minute or two in the hot sauce; a quarter-hour in the pan makes them rubbery.
- Yield and serviceOne large case serves about four as a first course, though the recipe leaves the size to the cook. The folded napkin was the conventional way of sending such dishes to table, and will also catch any leaked sauce.
- The cost note1s. 6d. per pound makes the puff paste itself a costly item, before anything goes inside it.
Vol-au-vent means "flight in the wind," and the tall hollow puff-paste case is traditionally associated with early nineteenth-century French pastry and often attributed to Antonin Carême, though that attribution is repeated more often than it is documented. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s the form had been thoroughly domesticated in England: the grand raised case had shrunk to something a household cook could manage, and the filling had become a way of presenting cooked fish or a modest quantity of shellfish as a set piece. The entry reads as a technique to be learned once and filled at will, which is how it functioned in a kitchen where the pastry could cost more than what went inside it.