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Pigeons, Vol-Au-Vent Of
Roll out a piece of puff-paste (see PUFF-PASTE) to the shape and size of the dish in which it is intended to serve the vol-au-vent. It should be a little more than an inch in thickness. Make a knife hot in water, and with it mark the cover evenly an inch from the edge all round. Ornament the border in any way that may be preferred, and brush the vol-au-vent quickly over with yolk of egg. Put it at once into a brisk oven. When it is sufficiently risen and brightly coloured, take it out. Take off the marked cover carefully, and scoop out the soft paste from the inside, without injuring the outside. Put the vol-au-vent back into the oven for a few minutes to dry, and fill it with the pigeons and sweetbreads prepared as follows. Divide two freshly-killed young pigeons into neat joints. Put two veal sweetbreads into a saucepan, cover them with lukewarm water, and set them over the fire until the water boils; then lift them out, and, plunge them at once into cold water. Cut them into neat pieces of uniform shape and size, and bind these securely together with twine. Put the sweetbreads, with the pigeons, into a stewpan, pour a cupful of water over them, and add an onion, a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, a slice of fat bacon, half an ounce of butter rolled in flour, and a little pepper and salt. Simmer gently for half an hour, then remove the twine from the sweetbreads, strain and thicken the gravy if necessary, and fill the vol-au-vent with the fricassee. The sauce must be very thick, or it will soften the light pastry. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian dinner-party centrepiece: a single tall puff-paste case, baked as a lidded box, then filled with a pale fricassee of squab and veal sweetbreads. The pastry and the filling are two separate jobs, and the filling must be ready before the case cools.
- The hinge: a very thick sauceThe original says it plainly and it is the whole reason the dish works or fails. A thin, brothy fricassee will turn the base of the case to paste within minutes. Reduce the strained cooking liquid until it visibly coats the back of a spoon before it goes anywhere near the pastry, and fill at the last moment.
- "Brisk oven"425-450F. Puff paste needs that initial blast to convert its water to steam and lift the layers; a moderate oven gives a squat, greasy case. If the top is browning before the middle has set, drop to 375F after the rise.
- An inch of pasteThat thickness is not a misprint. The case is meant to rise to several times its raw depth so there is a hollow worth scooping. Use a block of all-butter puff rolled out to a little over an inch; thin commercial sheets, even stacked, fall well short. Avoid rolling firmly, which welds the layers.
- The hot knifeDipping the blade in hot water and cutting the inner circle an inch from the edge cuts cleanly through the layers rather than dragging them, so the centre lifts as a neat lid rather than tearing. Cut only halfway through the depth. Keep egg wash off the cut edges, where it glues the layers shut.
- Pigeons"Freshly-killed young pigeons" means squab, sold today as farmed squab of about 12-16 oz. Wood pigeon is leaner and stronger and will not give the same pale fricassee. Two squab jointed is a modest amount of meat for six; three is more realistic by current appetites.
- SweetbreadsVeal sweetbreads are glands, usually the thymus, though pancreas is also sold under the name; order from a butcher. Modern practice soaks them in several changes of cold water for a few hours first, then blanches as described, then peels the outer membrane before cutting. The plunge into cold water is what firms them enough to trim; the twine simply holds the pieces in shape while they poach and comes off before serving.
- The twine and the aromaticsKitchen string, not synthetic. Onion, parsley, thyme, bay and a slice of fat bacon in a cupful of water make a short, concentrated cooking liquor rather than a stock -- that is intentional, since it becomes the sauce.
- Timing the simmerHalf an hour at a bare simmer suits jointed squab and cut sweetbreads. Squab breast dries out quickly, so if you want it pink, lift the breast pieces at around 12 minutes and return them to the finished sauce to warm through.
- Yield and cost"Sufficient for five or six persons" as a course within a longer meal, not as a main plate. The 4s. is a late-Victorian figure and means nothing now beyond signalling this as an expensive dish.
Vol-au-vent -- "flight in the wind" -- is, by the traditional explanation, French pastry-cook's language for a case so light it seems ready to blow away, and the form is generally traced to early nineteenth-century Parisian professional kitchens, from which it passed into English service cookery as a way of presenting an expensive ragout with maximum height on the table. What dates this version is the pairing: young pigeon and veal sweetbread were both prized precisely because they were pale, delicate and difficult, and both were common enough in a British larder that Cassell's could treat them as unremarkable. Pigeon in particular was still semi-domestic food in Victorian England, dovecotes having supplied squabs to country houses for centuries. The instruction to divide birds "freshly-killed" is a reminder that this was written for a household that bought birds whole and unhung, and that the cook was expected to joint them herself.