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VOL-AU-VENT (a la Normande)
Make a vol-au-vent case according to the instructions already given, bake it, lift off the cover, and have ready to fill it a good ragout. Put on the lid, and serve the vol-au-vent on a dish covered with a napkin. The ragout may be prepared as follows. Fillet a large sole, put it on a buttered dish, and sprinkle upon it a tea-spoonful of very finely-minced onions which have been previously par-boiled. Pour upon it as much milk or light wine as will barely cover it, and bake till done enough. Divide it into neat slices of uniform size, and put these in a stewpan with an equal quantity of oysters which have been plumped in their liquor, mussels which have been shaken over the fire in a stewpan till their shells opened, mushrooms which have been stewed in butter, and pieces of the crumb of bread about the size of a crown piece which have been fried in butter until they became lightly browned. Take as much veloute sauce as will cover the ingredients, put it into a saucepan, and stir in the oyster liquor, the mussel broth, and the gravy from the sole. Let it simmer till very thick. Beat the yolks of two eggs in a basin, mix a spoonful or two of the sauce with them, and add them to the rest. Simmer the sauce for a minute or two without allowing it to boil, and pour it over the fish. Let all heat very gently together for three or four minutes, and the ragout will be ready for the vol-au-vent.
A composed fish ragout in a puff pastry case, written for a kitchen that had a fish kettle, a stockpot and an unhurried afternoon. Nothing here is difficult, but the order of work matters more than the original lets on.
- The hinge: the egg liaisonOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must not boil or it will scramble and split. Temper them with a spoonful of hot sauce as directed, return the pan to the lowest heat, and stir until it thickens to coating consistency — no more than a minute or two.
- Bake the case separately, and hotCassell's cross-refers to its own puff pastry instructions. A modern all-butter puff case wants a hot oven, 425F, until fully risen and dry inside; a lower temperature gives a pale, soggy shell. Fill it only at the moment of serving, or the base turns to paste.
- Baking the soleThe recipe says only "bake till done enough" in milk or light wine, giving neither heat nor time. In a modern oven, a moderate 350F for about 10-12 minutes suits sole fillets -- until just opaque and barely firm. Save every drop of the cooking liquid; it is one of the three liquids that go into the sauce.
- Oysters and mussels"Plumped in their liquor" means brought just to the point where the edges ruffle, roughly a minute. Mussels need only 3–4 minutes covered over high heat, until they open; discard any that stay shut. Both are already cooked when they enter the stewpan, so the final "three or four minutes" of gentle heating is all they can take before going rubbery.
- VeloutéA blond roux loosened with light fish or veal stock, simmered until it coats a spoon. Made with fish stock it is what later books call a fish velouté. The recipe gives no quantity: take as much as will just cover the ingredients, as directed, then reduce it with the three cooking liquids until very thick.
- A crown pieceThe Victorian crown was about 1½ inches across. Cut the fried bread croûtons to roughly that — a little over an inch square is close enough, and they should be crisp, since they will soften in the sauce.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield or case size: one sole with equal volumes of oysters, mussels, mushrooms and croûtons makes a filling for a single vol-au-vent, served whole. The napkin under the vol-au-vent is standard nineteenth-century presentation for a pastry case sent to table.
Vol-au-vent — "flight in the wind" — takes its name from the lightness of the puff pastry shell, and its invention is traditionally credited to Antonin Carême in early nineteenth-century Paris, though hollow raised pastry cases filled with ragout are considerably older than that attribution. The suffix à la Normande signals Normandy, and in nineteenth-century French practice it meant a white fish garnish of oysters, mussels, mushrooms and fried croûtons in a cream-and-egg-enriched sauce, sometimes with the cider or apple that the region is better known for now. The dish is in effect a teaching exercise: it asks the cook to make puff pastry, poach a fish, open shellfish, build a velouté, and finish a sauce with a yolk liaison, then bring all five together at one moment. That the book expects a domestic reader to manage it says a good deal about how thoroughly French restaurant technique had settled into the ambitions of the late-Victorian English household.