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Sole, Fillets of, Vol-Au-Vent Of
This is a dish of a former day's remains. Pare the skin; cut the soles into round pieces of the size of half a crown. Then have a cream sauce, or else four spoonfuls of bechamel mixed with a quarter of a pound of butter, and a little salt and pepper. Let the sauce be made hot, without boiling, the soles put into it, and then the whole mixed into a vol-au-vent. The sauce must be kept rather thick, for fear of making the crust soft.
A leftovers dish from a period when a large boiled or fried sole was routinely reworked the next day. The whole thing hinges on the sauce: it must be hot enough to warm the fish through but never allowed to boil, or the butter will break and thin the sauce enough to soak the pastry.
- Half a crownThe coin was about 1¼ inches (32 mm) across. Cut the cooked fillets into rounds of roughly that size so they sit in the case without collapsing into shreds.
- Vol-au-vent caseA baked puff-pastry shell with a lid, not a baked casserole. The recipe assumes the case is already made and gives no baking instruction; bake it empty in a hot oven until risen and dry inside, remove the soft centre, and dry it a further few minutes before filling.
- Four spoonfuls to a quarter poundThat is about 4 tablespoons of béchamel enriched with 4 oz butter — an extremely rich butter sauce rather than a béchamel proper. The recipe says only that the two are "mixed"; adding the butter cold, a piece at a time and off direct heat, works much as for a modern beurre monté.
- Hot without boilingKeep the sauce below a simmer; a butter emulsion of this kind holds at around 160-175F and is liable to split as it nears boiling, after which the sauce runs. The recipe's own stated reason for keeping the sauce rather thick is fear of softening the crust.
- Cream sauce alternative"A cream sauce" in period usage generally means a made sauce rather than plain cream. If cream alone is used, reducing double cream until it coats a spoon will give a body that single cream or half-and-half will not.
- Reheating cooked fishUse fish that has been refrigerated, not left standing, and use it within a day of cooking. Warm it through properly in the sauce; the fish is already cooked, so a minute or two is enough before it dries and shreds.
- Assemble at the last minuteFill the case only as it goes to the table. Even a thick sauce will begin to soften puff pastry within a few minutes.
Vol-au-vent — literally "flight in the wind," traditionally explained as a nod to how little the baked shell weighs — belongs to the French pastry repertoire that dominated nineteenth-century English cookbooks, and its invention is traditionally credited to Antonin Carême, though the attribution is repeated far more often than it is documented. What makes this entry characteristic of Cassell's is not the pastry but the opening line: "a dish of a former day's remains." A Victorian household that bought a whole sole expected to see it twice, and the dictionary is full of these second appearances, in which a rich sauce and a handsome case turn yesterday's fish into something a cook could send up without apology. The economy is real, but so is the expense — a quarter pound of butter for a few spoonfuls of sauce was not a frugal gesture, only a differently placed one.