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Veal, Vol-Au-Vent Of
Make a vol-au-vent case the size and shape of the dish in which it is to be served, and bake in a brisk oven (see VOL-AU-VENT). When done, take out the lid, scrape out the soft pastry, and put it in the oven for a few minutes to dry. Fill carefully with a hot savoury ragout prepared as follows. Cut some lean veal into thin slices the size of half a crown. Beat these with a cutlet-bat, and fry them till they are lightly browned. Cover with rich brown thick gravy highly flavoured (see VEAL, GRAVY FOR), put with them a few fried forcemeat balls, and serve the vol-au-vent on a napkin. Small vol-au-vents may be filled with the savoury preparation recommended for veal patties.
A Victorian composed dish: a puff pastry case baked hollow, then filled at the last moment with a hot ragout. The pastry and the filling are two separate jobs, and the only thing that matters is that they meet as late as possible.
- The hingeFill the case as close to serving as possible. A vol-au-vent standing full of wet gravy softens quickly, which is presumably why the book has you dry the scraped-out interior in the oven first.
- "Brisk oven"A hot oven, in modern terms roughly 425F for puff pastry; some cooks drop the heat once the case has risen and coloured so the interior layers set through. A cool start gives a squat, greasy case.
- Pastry shortcutAll-butter frozen puff pastry is entirely adequate here. Cut two rounds, remove a smaller inner circle from one to make a collar, egg-wash between layers, and chill hard before baking so it rises straight.
- "The size of half a crown"A half-crown coin was about 1 1/4 inches across. So: thin veal escalope trimmed into rounds or squares roughly that size, beaten flat with a mallet between sheets of plastic.
- Frying the vealTwo minutes total in hot butter or clarified butter. Thin beaten veal is dry the moment it is overdone, and it will finish in the hot gravy.
- Forcemeat ballsVictorian veal forcemeat is minced veal or pork with breadcrumbs, suet, lemon zest, parsley and egg to bind, rolled small and fried. Good pork sausagemeat with lemon zest and parsley worked in stands in for it.
- The gravyThe cross-reference will point to a reduced brown veal stock thickened with a brown roux; the recipe asks only for "rich brown thick gravy highly flavoured", and a little sherry or Madeira is a reasonable modern reading of that. It should coat, not pool; a thin gravy will breach the pastry.
- Quantities and yieldThe original gives none. A 9-inch case with about 1 1/4 lb veal and a pint of thick gravy serves six as a main course.
- "Serve on a napkin"A folded linen napkin on the platter; the usual explanation is that it soaked up grease and kept the case from sliding. Presentational now, and skippable.
Vol-au-vent means "flight in the wind", a name for the near-weightless puff case that is generally traced to early nineteenth-century French pastry work and often attributed to Antonin Carême's circle, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s the form had become a standard vehicle in English kitchens for anything expensive enough to deserve a frame: oysters, sweetbreads, chicken, and veal. Its presence in a dictionary of cookery under a range of different fillings shows how such books worked, by cross-reference rather than by full instruction, assuming a cook who already had the pastry, the forcemeat and the brown veal gravy in her repertoire and needed only to be told how to assemble them.