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VOL-AU-VENT (a la Financiere)
Prepare a vol-au-vent case according to the instructions already given, bake it, lift off the cover, and dry the inside. Fill it with a financiere ragout (see RAGOUT, FINANCIERE), ornament the top with crayfish, cockscombs, and mushrooms; or, if preferred, simply place the cover on the top of the vol-au-vent, and serve. The ragout may be prepared as follows. Put into a stewpan equal quantities of sweet-bread, forcemeat balls, and mushrooms, all cooked, with a few sliced truffles and cockscombs if liked. Cover with thick and rich brown sauce made from game, and add a glassful of sherry or Madeira. Let the ragout simmer very gently till it is heated throughout, and it will be ready for the vol-au-vent. Time, three minutes to heat the ragout.
A late-Victorian assembly dish rather than a recipe from scratch: the work is in the components, and the vol-au-vent itself is only the vessel. Nearly everything here can be made ahead, which is the point.
- The hinge: everything goes in hotThree minutes is the stated time because every element — sweetbread, forcemeat, mushrooms, sauce — is already cooked; the recipe has the ragout simmer very gently only until it is heated throughout. Filling a crisp case with a ragout that then has to cook will soften the pastry from the inside within minutes.
- Fill at the last momentBake the case, lift the lid, remove any soft uncooked centre and dry the inside in a low oven, as the recipe directs; no temperature is specified. Fill only as it goes to table, as a vol-au-vent left standing full will soften.
- CockscombsBlanched and peeled cockerel combs were a standard financière garnish and are effectively unobtainable now outside specialist butchers. Omitting them costs the dish texture rather than flavour; extra mushroom caps or small quenelles fill the same visual role.
- SweetbreadsCalf or lamb sweetbreads, soaked in several changes of cold water, blanched, pressed under a weight, trimmed of membrane, then poached or braised — that is what "cooked" assumes. Cut them into pieces roughly the size of the mushrooms so the ragout eats evenly.
- "Thick and rich brown sauce made from game"This is an espagnole or demi-glace built on a game stock — roasted pheasant, partridge or venison bones. A good reduced brown veal or chicken demi-glace is the practical substitute; the sauce should coat a spoon heavily, since a thin one will soak the pastry.
- A glassful of sherry or MadeiraThe recipe gives no measure; read it as roughly 2 fl oz (60 ml). The recipe adds it to the ragout, but letting it reduce briefly in the sauce first stops the fortified wine tasting raw.
- CrayfishWhole cooked freshwater crayfish, shelled tails or claws set around the rim, were the conventional finish. Any small cooked shellfish reads the same way, and the garnish is entirely optional if the lid is simply replaced.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities, case size or yield. A single large vol-au-vent of this kind would serve roughly four to six; about 1 lb of combined sweetbread, forcemeat and mushrooms with enough thick sauce to coat them is a reasonable modern reckoning.
À la financière — "in the financier's manner" — was nineteenth-century restaurant shorthand for the most expensive garnish on the list: sweetbreads, cockscombs and kidneys, truffles, quenelles, mushrooms and crayfish, bound in a Madeira-scented brown sauce. The name is generally traced to the idea that only a financier could afford it, and by Cassell's day it functioned less as a specific formula than as a badge of luxury applied to vol-au-vents, chicken, veal and timbales alike. The vol-au-vent itself — "flight in the wind", for pastry that rises to almost nothing but air — is attested in French sources from the later eighteenth century. That this entry cross-refers the reader to two other articles rather than giving full instructions shows how such a dictionary was meant to be used: as a system of interchangeable parts, where a cook who had mastered puff paste and a game espagnole could assemble a dozen grand dishes from them.