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Vol-Au-Vent of Lambs' Tails
Make a vol-au-vent case according to the directions already given. Having scalded half a dozen lambs' tails, cut them into inch lengths, put them into a stewpan, with a bunch of green onions, a few sprigs of parsley, a blade of mace, and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter or white fat of veal. Cover them with boiling water, and let them stew till quite tender. Then put them on a napkin, wipe all the grease from them, put them into a little bechamel, give them a boil up, and just before serving them put into the sauce two yolks of eggs beaten up with a spoonful of cream. Lay the tails in the vol-au-vent case and pour the sauce over them. Put some boiled sprigs of parsley into the sauce a moment before serving.
A Victorian off-cut dish dressed in French pastry. The cooking itself is straightforward; the difficulties are sourcing and the egg-yolk finish.
- The hinge: the liaisonOnce the beaten yolks and cream go into the béchamel the sauce must not boil, or it will curdle and grain. Add them off the heat, stir until the sauce thickens and coats the spoon, and serve immediately.
- Sourcing lambs' tailsDocked tails were a spring by-product of sheep farming and are now almost never sold retail. A halal or whole-carcass butcher may order them; they must arrive skinned and de-wooled, not merely trimmed.
- "Scalded"In the trade sense this usually means dipping in near-boiling water so the wool and outer skin can be scraped away, much as for pigs' trotters, though the word can also mean no more than a blanch. If the butcher has already cleaned them, go straight to cutting into inch lengths.
- White fat of vealThis is the firm kidney or caul fat from a calf, once sold as a bland cooking fat. Butter is the workable substitute and the recipe already offers it.
- Green onions and maceGreen onions here are spring onions, tied in a bundle with the parsley so they can be lifted out whole. A blade of mace is one piece of the lacy husk of nutmeg; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, added at the end of the stewing.
- Stewing time"Quite tender" means the meat pulls easily from the vertebrae, roughly 1½ to 2 hours at a bare simmer. These are gelatinous joints and will not overcook so much as fall apart, so check from 90 minutes.
- Wiping the greaseThe instruction to drain on a napkin is not fussiness. Tails render a great deal of fat, and any left behind will make the sauce greasy and liable to separate. Let the pieces cool slightly and blot them thoroughly.
- The caseA vol-au-vent case is puff pastry baked in a hot oven (around 425°F in a modern oven) until fully risen and dry inside, then the lid cut off and the soft centre lifted out. Fill it at the last moment or the base goes soggy.
- QuantityHalf a dozen tails yields a small amount of meat. Allow about a cup of béchamel and treat one large case as a first course for four, or use individual cases.
Lambs' tails came into the kitchen as a by-product of docking, done in spring when lambs were a few weeks old, which made them a strictly seasonal and strictly rural delicacy — lambs' tail pie and lambs' tail pudding are recorded in several English farming counties, and the tails were often said to be a perquisite of the shepherd rather than something bought. What makes this entry characteristic of Cassell's is the treatment: an offcut that a farmhouse would have baked under a crust is here cut into neat lengths, stewed, degreased, bound in béchamel enriched with yolks and cream, and served in a puff-pastry case in the French manner. Vol-au-vent means roughly "flight in the wind," a name for the near-weightless risen shell that is generally traced to the Parisian pastry trade of the early nineteenth century. The combination tells you a good deal about late-Victorian cookery writing, which was busy teaching a growing middle class to put thrifty English materials into fashionable Continental dress.