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Turkey Patties
777. Mince some of the white meat, and with grated lemon, nutmeg, salt, a very little white pepper, cream, and a very little butter warmed, fill the patties.
For lobster and oyster patties, see pages 72-73.
VOL-AU-VENTS. 778. A Vol-au-Vent is a raised pie, made with very light and rich puff paste (pars. 733 or 734), instead of that used for the raised pie, or it may be considered as an enlarged and highly-ornamented patty. There is considerable art in making and baking these cases, as they are put into the oven without their contents, and then filled with them afterwards. The paste is made to line a fluted dish or tin, and baked till it is of a fine light brown; but few cooks can understand how to make it without actual demonstration. Turbot and salmon are employed for this dish, dressed up with cream, and come to table a second time even with more approbation than in their original form.
A leftover-turkey filling rather than a full dish: the pastry cases are assumed to exist already, and no quantities are given at all. Treat the list as proportions to taste and build the filling as a thick, barely-moist mince rather than a sauce.
- What the recipe assumes you have"Patties" here are small baked puff-paste cases, what a modern kitchen calls vol-au-vent shells or bouchées. Ready-made frozen cases work; bake them empty and fill them warm, as the original directs for the larger version.
- Grated lemonThis means the zest only, grated fine from an unwaxed lemon. Half a teaspoon is enough for a cupful of mince; the juice would thin the cream and curdle it.
- The turkeyWhite meat from an already-roasted bird, chopped fine by hand rather than pulsed to paste in a processor. Roughly 1 cup of mince, 3-4 tablespoons of cream and a tablespoon of butter fills six small cases.
- Cream, not sauceThe cream and warmed butter are there to bind and moisten, not to make a fricassee. Add the cream a spoonful at a time over low heat until the mince just holds together; too much and the pastry goes soft within minutes.
- Nutmeg and white pepperBoth were standard with poultry and cream in the nineteenth century, and both are meant to be felt rather than tasted. Grate the nutmeg fresh; the pre-ground tin is a different and duller spice.
- ReheatingCooked turkey that has been chilled should be brought right through to steaming hot before it goes into the cases, then served at once. Warming it only to blood heat in cream is where old leftover cookery went wrong.
- ServingTwo per person as a first course or a light supper dish. Fill at the last moment; these do not hold.
Patties of this kind are usually described as the English counterpart of the French petits pâtés, small cases of puff paste filled with a rich mince, and by the middle of the nineteenth century they were one common genteel use for the remains of a roast. That is the logic of this entry: the white meat of a large bird is chopped, enriched with cream and butter and lemon zest, and returned to the table in new clothes. The companion note on vol-au-vents makes the point explicitly, remarking that turbot and salmon so treated "come to table a second time even with more approbation than in their original form." The vol-au-vent itself is generally traced to the Parisian pastry cooks of the early 1800s and is often credited to Antonin Carême, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented; its appearance in British books like this one reflects the absorption of French pastry technique into English household cookery, and the author adds that "few cooks can understand how to make it without actual demonstration."