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Plum Vol-Au-Vent
Boil six ounces of loaf sugar in half a pint of water for ten minutes. Take off the stalks from a pound of plums, wash, and drain the fruit, and then put them into the syrup. Let them boil up once, then draw the saucepan to the side, and simmer them very gently for about three minutes, or until they are quite tender without being broken. Lift the plums out carefully, boil the syrup until it is considerably reduced and very thick, strain it, and when cold pour it over the fruit. Plums prepared in this way may be used for large and small vol-au-vents. The fruit should not be put into the pastry until the moment before it is to be served.
A fruit compote in heavy syrup, intended as the filling for a puff-pastry case. The recipe assumes you already have baked vol-au-vent shells to hand.
- The hinge: keep the plums wholeEverything here turns on the fruit staying intact. One brief boil, then off the direct heat to barely tremble for about three minutes, and lift the plums out the moment a skewer meets no resistance. Plums collapse very suddenly, and split fruit will weep into the pastry.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold in hard cones or blocks to be broken up; loaf sugar was the refined, white grade. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent. Six ounces is a scant cup.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. Boiling it with the sugar for ten minutes before the fruit goes in drives off some of that water and gives a syrup dense enough that the plums poach rather than stew.
- Choosing the fruitSmall, firm, slightly underripe plums hold their shape best — damsons, greengages or an unyielding Italian prune plum. Large soft dessert plums will break up in the pan, and a pound of them amounts to only a few pieces of fruit, too few to fill a large case neatly.
- Reducing the syrup"Considerably reduced and very thick" is a judgement by eye: reduce until the syrup runs thickly and slowly from the spoon. Under-reduced syrup will soak the pastry base within minutes.
- Vol-au-vent casesBought all-butter puff pastry, cut into two rounds with the centre removed from one, baked in a hot oven (roughly 400-425F) until risen and dry through, gives a serviceable case. Dry the interior thoroughly before filling.
- AssemblyThe instruction to fill only at the last moment is not fussiness. A filled case holds its crispness for a few minutes at most; fruit and syrup can be prepared a day ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator.
- YieldA pound of plums in syrup will fill one large case or a number of small individual ones.
The vol-au-vent — "flight in the wind", for pastry so light it seems ready to lift off — is generally traced to the Parisian pâtisserie of the early nineteenth century and is often credited to Antonin Carême, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. It began as a savoury vessel for ragoûts and quenelles, and the sweet version, filled with poached fruit in a reduced syrup, was a natural extension once English kitchens took up French pastry work in earnest. The technique of holding fruit whole in a heavy syrup was also, in a household without refrigeration, a short-term preservation method — sugar concentration doing the work that a cold larder could not.