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Vol-Au-Vent
Roll puff-paste one half inch thick and from it cut out two large ovals, using a sharp knife first dipped in flour. Place it on a shallow baking tin; cut a smaller oval from the second piece and lay the ring on the first, moistening slightly so that the two will stick together when baked. Roll out the piece cut from the second oval until it is the size of the others and bake in a separate pan as a cover for the vol-au-vent. Bake in a hot oven, covering with paper after the first fifteen minutes. It will require three quarters of an hour or longer; and unless baked thoroughly the crust will fall in cooling. When ready to use, reheat and fill with creamed oysters or game; or for dessert fill with sugared fruit and serve with whipped cream.
A shell, not a filled dish: the recipe builds a free-standing puff-pastry case with a lid, to be baked ahead and filled at the last moment. Two things decide whether it works — the pastry must go into a genuinely hot oven, and it must be baked well past the point where it looks done.
- The hinge: bake it dry"Unless baked thoroughly the crust will fall in cooling" is the whole instruction. The walls have to set firm all the way through, not just brown on the surface, so give it the full three quarters of an hour and take it further if the sides still feel soft or springy.
- "A hot oven"In books of this period usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. Puff paste needs that heat for the water in the dough and butter layers to flash into steam and lift the sheets; a moderate oven tends to melt the butter out instead and you get a flat, greasy slab.
- The paper coverA sheet of parchment laid loosely over the pastry after fifteen minutes shields the top once it has risen and coloured, letting the interior finish cooking. Do not press it down or weight it.
- Puff pasteThe book assumes you make your own. All-butter commercial puff pastry works; half an inch is thicker than sheets come rolled, so stack and lightly press two layers, or roll a block. Do not use puff pastry sheets straight from the box at their sold thickness — the walls will be too thin to stand.
- Sizes and yield"Two large ovals" is unspecified; something like 8 by 5 inches makes a case that will serve a small table, with the inner oval cut roughly an inch inside the edge to leave a substantial rim. Chill the cut pieces before baking so the edges stay sharp.
- MoisteningWater on a fingertip is enough to bond the ring to the base. Egg wash between the layers can glue the rise shut; brush egg only on the outer top surface if you want gloss, keeping it off the cut edges.
- Creamed oystersIf you fill it with oysters, poach them only until the edges ruffle, about two minutes, and finish the sauce separately. Longer cooking turns them rubbery.
- Fill at the tableReheat the empty shell at 350F for a few minutes to crisp it, then fill immediately before serving. A filled case softens within minutes, and a fruit-and-cream filling faster still.
Vol-au-vent means "flight in the wind" — traditionally read as a French pastry-cook's boast about how light the case is, and a name generally associated with the early nineteenth-century Paris kitchens of Antonin Carême, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. In American cookbooks of this period the vol-au-vent was a common way to dress up a small quantity of expensive food: creamed oysters, minced game, sweetbreads, or in the sweet version sugared fruit under whipped cream.