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How to Make Patty Cases
Use puff paste for which recipe is given elsewhere. To shape the paste, roll to about ¼ inch in thickness and stamp out with 2 inch cutter twice as many pieces as you wish shells. Cut centres from onehalf of them, leaving the rim about 1/2 inch wide. Lay these rings on the whole rounds, pressing them down that they may stick together. In very cold weather it may be necessary to wet the top of the large rounds near the edge to make sure that the rings will not slip. To make very deep shells, roll the paste about ⅛ inch thick and lay on two rings, or even three, but these are troublesome to make as they are apt to slip to one side. The oven should be as hot as for baking white bread.
Patty shells should rise in 10 minutes then take about 20 minutes longer to bake through and brown. There will usually be a little soft dough in the centre that should be picked out with a fork, taking great care not to break through the side or bottom crust. Large Vol-au-Vent cases should be rolled to the thickness of 1½ inches and may be round or oval in shape.
Mark out an inner line about 2 inches from the edge and with a thin, sharp knife blade (dipped first in hot water) cut from two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through the paste. These are much more difficult to bake than the smaller shells and there is always much uncooked paste to be removed from the centre. filling gives the name to the dish.
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A method rather than an ingredient list, and it depends entirely on the puff paste behaving. A few points translate the old instructions into numbers and habits a modern cook can act on.
- Oven heat"As hot as for baking white bread" means a hot oven, roughly 400-425F. Puff paste needs that initial blast to turn its water into steam and drive the layers apart; a moderate oven produces a greasy, squat shell.
- Cutter and yieldA 2-inch cutter gives cocktail-sized shells; each finished shell uses two rounds, so a batch of 24 rounds yields 12 shells. For a first course allow two or three per person.
- Keep everything coldThe warning about wetting the rounds in cold weather is really the reverse of the modern concern. Chill the assembled shells for 20-30 minutes before baking so the butter is firm going into the hot oven, which is what makes the rise.
- Cut cleanly, straight downA sharp cutter pressed straight down, not twisted, is the hinge of the whole thing. Twisting seals the cut layers together and the shell rises lopsided or not at all.
- TimingTen minutes to rise, then about 20 minutes more, is sound for 2-inch shells at that heat. If the tops colour too fast before the interior sets, drop to 375F rather than pulling them early; underbaked puff collapses as it cools.
- Vol-au-vent thicknessThe stated 1½ inches is very thick for a large case. If the paste is that deep, expect a great deal of raw interior to scoop out, exactly as the text admits.
- Hollowing outCut or lift the lid while the case is still hot and pull the damp interior out with a fork, then return the empty shell to the oven for 5 minutes to dry. Shells hollowed cold tear.
- Filling and holdingBake shells ahead, keep them airtight, and refresh at 350F for a few minutes before filling. Fill only at the moment of serving; a hot creamed filling turns the interior to paste within minutes.
Patty cases and their outsized relative the vol-au-vent belong to the French pastry repertoire that entered English and North American cooking through professional kitchens in the nineteenth century -- vol-au-vent, "flight in the wind", is a name of uncertain origin, traditionally linked to Antonin Carême, and it describes how little the finished case weighs for its size. The trailing note that "filling gives the name to the dish" is the key to why the recipe appears here at all: a household with reliable puff paste could produce chicken patties, oyster patties, sweetbread patties and lobster patties from a single technique, and shells could be baked in the cool of the morning and filled at dinner.