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Vol-Au-Vents, Small
For small vol-au-vents, make the pastry, and prepare the cases according to the instructions already given for making a large vol-au-vent. Roll the pastry out to the thickness of half an inch. Two pastry-cutters will be needed to cut out the lids and bottoms of the vol-au-vents--the smaller one the size of half a crown, the larger one double the size. If these cutters are fluted, so much the better. Bake the vol-au-vents in a moderately-heated oven; when done enough, lift off the covers, and scoop out the insides as before; dry the pastry, and fill the cavity with any of the varieties of meat which can be prepared for the purpose. Put on the covers, and serve the vol-au-vents, hot or cold, on a neatly-folded napkin. Time to bake small vol-au-vents, ten to twelve minutes.
A method rather than a formula: the book assumes you have already read its entry for the large vol-au-vent and have puff pastry to hand. The points below cover the measurements and oven that no longer read plainly.
- Half a crownThe coin was about 1¼ inches (32 mm) across, so the smaller cutter is a 3 cm round and the larger one roughly 2½ inches (6 cm). "Double the size" is ambiguous between diameter and area; doubling the diameter would leave a rim a little over half an inch wide.
- The oven numberPuff pastry needs fierce initial heat to turn the water in the butter layers to steam and lift them, so a modern baker would use something in the region of 400-425F (200-220C). What a Victorian writer meant by "moderately-heated" is not fixed, and the phrase is usually read as cooler than that; at a literal modern 350F the cases will leak butter and stay squat.
- Half-inch pastryThat thickness is deliberate and generous — it is what gives a small case walls tall enough to hold filling. Roll evenly and cut with a single decisive press; twisting the cutter seals the cut edge and the case rises lopsided.
- Cold pastry, cold handsThe hinge of the whole thing. Rest the cut rounds in the refrigerator until firm before they go in, and chill the pastry again if it softens while you work. Warm puff pastry does not rise straight.
- Ten to twelve minutesRealistic for cases this small in a hot oven, but judge by colour and by whether the sides feel rigid rather than by the clock. Underbaked centres collapse the moment you scoop them.
- Scoop and dryLifting the lid and removing the soft interior is not optional; the damp crumb inside will make the filling weep. Return the hollowed cases to a low oven, around 300F, for a few minutes to dry them out.
- FillingsThe "varieties of meat" are presumably the book's own thick creamed mixtures — chicken, sweetbreads, oysters, ragouts bound with a well-reduced velouté or béchamel. The binding must be stiff enough to mound on a spoon, or the pastry goes soggy within minutes.
- Yield and serviceServe as a first course or buffet dish. The folded napkin stopped the cases sliding and caught any butter; a plain doily or paper serves the same end.
- Fill at the last momentIf serving hot, warm the empty cases and the filling separately and combine them as they go to the table. Cases filled and held will slump.
Vol-au-vent means "flight in the wind", a name generally traced to the lightness of the puff-pastry shell, and its invention is traditionally credited to Antonin Carême in early nineteenth-century Paris — a claim repeated everywhere but not firmly documented. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s and 80s the form had become standard English dinner-party currency, the large vol-au-vent as a centrepiece entrée and these small ones as petits cases for a first course, a supper table or a ball buffet. Their appeal to a Victorian kitchen was practical: the shells could be baked in the morning, dried, and stored, then filled with whatever ragout or creamed mixture the larder offered, which is exactly why the book declines to specify a filling at all. The instruction to serve on a folded napkin follows the general convention for pastry and fried dishes, which was observed under any style of service.