Home › The Principles of Cookery › Vol-Au-Vent
Vol-Au-Vent
A vol-au-vent presents one of the handsomest forms in which the remains of dishes can be served. It is generally filled with a mince, or ragout, or fricassee--or whatever other preparation may be chosen--of cooked meat; and after the vol-au-vent case is made, there is abundant opportunity for the cook to display her skill, either in the richness and delicacy, or in the savoury nature of its contents. A vol-au-vent can be made successfully only with the lightest puff-paste. Full directions are given for making this under PASTE, PUFF, OR FEUILLETAGE. It should be remembered that the puff-paste of which a vol-au-vent is made will be much better if it is prepared an hour or two before it is wanted, and placed in a cool situation till required. If the puff-paste is not exceedingly light, the vol-au-vent will not rise properly, and so will have a very bad appearance. In rolling it, care must be taken to keep it perfectly square and even at the ends, as unless this is done the pastry cannot rise evenly. The pastry for a vol-au-vent ought to have six turns, and five minutes should be allowed to elapse between each turn. After it has been turned five times, brush the pastry over with lemon-juice, and when it is doubled for the last time, fold it in such a way that, when finished, it will be the exact size of the inside of the dish in which it is to be served, and a little more than an inch thick. Cut it evenly all round with a knife that has been made hot in water, so as not to drag the pastry. Place a stewpan lid, or any other shape of a suitable size, within an inch and a half of the outer edge of the pastry, and with a sharp knife make an incision a quarter of an inch deep all round the edge of the lid. Press the inner circle away from the outer one with the point of the knife to prevent them closing again; this inner circle, when baked, will form the cover of the vol-au-vent. Put the vol-au-vent in a well-heated oven; in half an hour or three-quarters of an hour, if it should appear baked through, take it out of the oven, lift up the cover with the point of a knife where it has been marked, and scoop out the soft crummy centre without at all injuring the walls of the case. It will be evident that if it should be injured in this way, the rich sauce of the ragout with which it is filled will ooze through the sides and spoil its appearance. Put it in the oven a few minutes longer to dry it, fill with the savoury mince, put the cover on, and serve on a napkin. Careful attention should be paid to the condition of the oven in which a vol-au-vent is baked; if it is not well heated, the pastry cannot possibly rise; if the heat is too fierce, the surface will be set before the heat has penetrated through the pastry, and this also will keep it from rising. When it has risen a couple of inches, and before it acquires any colour, cover the vol-au-vent with paper to keep it from browning too quickly. If accidentally the walls of the vol-au-vent should receive any injury, a little piece of pastry should be stuck upon the thin place with white of egg. The appearance of the vol-au-vent will be improved if it is brushed over with egg after it has risen in the oven. Time to bake the vol-au-vent, half an hour to three-quarters of an hour. Sufficient, three-quarters of a pound to one pound of puff-paste for a good-sized vol-au-vent.
This is a method for the case rather than a filling, and everything hinges on the pastry. The instructions assume you have made the puff paste yourself from the book's own entry; all-butter commercial puff pastry, rolled out and given one or two extra turns, behaves much the same.
- The hinge: oven heatThe book gives no temperatures, only "well-heated". Modern practice for puff pastry is usually somewhere around 425F. Too cool and the layers never lift; too fierce and the outside sets before the steam has done its work. Starting hot for the first 15 minutes to get the rise and then dropping to around 375F to bake the walls through is one way to manage that.
- Covering with paperOnce the case has climbed a couple of inches and before it colours, lay a sheet of parchment or loosely tented foil over the top. This is not optional in a modern fan oven, which browns faster than a Victorian range.
- Six turns, five minutes apartSix turns is the classic figure, and five or six is normal now. The five-minute rests were written for a cold larder. In a modern kitchen, chill the paste 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator between turns, and never roll it while the butter is soft.
- The hot knifeDipping the knife in boiling water and wiping it dry gives a clean vertical cut that does not seal the laminated edges together. A sealed edge will not rise. Cut straight down, do not drag, and do not twist a cutter.
- Quantity and sizeThree-quarters of a pound to a pound of puff paste is 340-450 g. The recipe sizes the case to the inside of the dish it is served in rather than giving a diameter or a number of servings. The finished slab before baking should be a little over an inch thick, thicker than one might expect.
- The lemon juiceBrushing with lemon juice after the fifth turn is generally said to relax the gluten and help the paste roll without shrinking. It is harmless to skip, and a splash of lemon juice in the initial dough water is often used to the same end.
- Egg washThe instruction to brush with egg after it has risen in the oven works, but is awkward. Egg-washing the top surface only before baking is easier; keep egg off the cut sides, as it glues the layers shut.
- The filling, and leftovers"The remains of dishes" means yesterday's cooked meat. Bring any such filling to a full simmer and hold it above 165F before it goes in, and assemble at the last moment. A thick sauce is essential: a loose one soaks the case and it collapses on the way to the table.
Vol-au-vent means "flight in the wind", a name generally traced to the extreme lightness of the risen case and usually credited by tradition to Antonin Carême's Paris kitchens in the early nineteenth century, though the attribution is repeated far more often than it is documented. By the time Cassell's dictionary appeared, the vol-au-vent seems to have become one of the standard respectable English solutions to the problem this entry names outright: what to do with cold cooked meat. A large household roasted and boiled joints far bigger than one meal, and the puff-paste case turned the second appearance of that meat into something a cook could be proud of sending up. The confidence that a domestic cook would make her own six-turn feuilletage for the purpose says a good deal about the period's kitchen labour; the entry's insistence on scooping out the soft centre without piercing the walls says a good deal about how often it went wrong.