Home › Sauces › Chapter IX-Entrées
Chapter IX-Entrées
N ENTRÉE is often merely a somewhat elaborate way of serving a left-over. It should always be made as attractive and palatable as possible and served as a separate course. Patties, timbales, croquettes and fritters are among the best known entrées, while choice vegetables such as artichokes, asparagus, mushrooms, etc. are quite as often used. Ramekins, paper cases, pastry shells, etc., are invaluable in the serving of entrées.
INDIVIDUAL ENTRÉE CASES (Timbale Cases)-These little cases are made by immersing a heated timbale iron in cold batter and then in hot fat. The resulting case should be of a delicate brown color and as crisp as a cracker. The batter is made as follows: Mix one teaspoon of sugar, one-half teaspoon salt and three-fourths of a cup of sifted flour. Add to these dry ingredients one well-beaten egg, one tablespoon of olive oil and one-half cup milk. Beat with an egg-beater until perfectly smooth, and, if the result is not satisfactory, strain. This batter should be made an hour before needed and set aside to cool. Pour this batter into a deep cup otherwise it would soon be too low to cover the timbale iron. Have ready a kettle of hot fat at a temperature to brown a piece of bread while counting forty. Also have a sheet of absorbent paper on which to drain the cases when cooked. Immerse the iron in hot fat until thoroughly heated. The fat should be deep enough to more than cover the mold end of the iron. Remove, and drop into batter until iron is covered to three-fourths of its height. This is necessary to allow for the rise of the batter in cooking. If only a thin layer of batter adheres to the mold, dip into batter again until mold is covered with a smooth layer of the partially cooked batter. Dip quickly into hot fat for about twelve seconds. Remove, hold the iron with mold end up to allow fat to drain from the case. When properly cooked the cooked batter should slip easily from the mold. Place the finished case on absorbent paper and continue the operation until batter is exhausted. A fluted timbale iron is easier to work with as the case does not slip off until thoroughly cooked. If cases are not crisp it shows that batter is too thick and should be diluted with milk. After skill has been gained in making these cases they may be used with great variety. They may be filled with a choice vegetable served in cream sauce, or with creamed oysters, chicken, sweetbreads, etc. They may also be filled with fresh or cooked fruit, topped with whipped cream or powdered sugar, and served as a sweet course.
VOL AU VENTS-A vol au vent is a large kind of patty; the name signifies, in French, something that will fly away in the wind. Roll out some puff paste one and one-half inch in thickness. Cut a circle six to six and one-half inches in diameter, using a plate or regular cutter to measure by. Place on a baking tin and cut a smaller circle around the top, about one and one-half inch from edge to the depth of about an inch. Bake in a large flat pan, in a hot oven for thirty minutes. When cooked, take off the cover, remove the uncooked paste and it is ready to be filled. They may be filled with oysters (stewed); cold lobster or chicken, or any kind of delicate meat or fish chopped and seasoned with salt and pepper, and heated in béchamel, white, brown or mushroom sauce. In using fish always add one teaspoon of lemon juice after the mixture is taken from the fire. Sweetmeats of any kind, or fresh berries sweetened may also be used.
Two fried-and-baked shells with one purpose: to hold something creamed. Both are workable today, though the timbale iron has become a specialty item and the puff paste dimensions need a second look.
- The hinge: heat the iron, not just the fatThe batter sets on contact with the hot metal, and a cool iron gives a shell that slides off half-raw or refuses to release at all. Heat the iron submerged in the fat every single time before it touches the batter, and blot the excess fat from it so the batter can grip.
- Fat temperatureBread browning while you count forty puts the fat somewhere in the 360-380F range, though these counting tests are only approximate. Above that the case darkens before it sets; below it, the shell drinks fat and turns leathery instead of cracker-crisp.
- Batter depth on the ironThree-quarters of the iron's height is not fussiness. Batter climbs as it cooks, and if it laps over the top edge the case locks onto the mold and has to be broken off.
- Timbale irons todaySold as timbale or rosette irons, usually a threaded set of molds on a long handle. A fluted pattern behaves exactly as described here, gripping the batter until it is set through.
- Resting the batterThe hour of standing lets the flour hydrate and the bubbles from beating subside. Batter used straight from the beater fries up blistered and uneven.
- Thinning the batterThe troubleshooting note is accurate: heavy, soft cases mean the batter is too thick. Add milk a tablespoon at a time until it coats the iron in a thin, even film.
- "A hot oven"For the vol-au-vent, read 425-450F. Puff paste needs that initial blast to convert its water to steam and lift the layers before the butter melts out.
- The puff paste thicknessAn inch and a half of rolled puff paste is extraordinarily thick by modern practice and may well not bake through evenly in thirty minutes. Commercial all-butter puff is usually rolled thinner, around an eighth to a quarter inch; for a raised case, stack a base round with a cut ring or two on top and egg-wash between.
- Sweetbreads and the fillingsSweetbreads still exist but are a butcher's order. Any of the fillings named must be fully cooked and hot before it goes into the shell, since the case adds no cooking of its own.
- Yield and timingThree-quarters of a cup of flour makes a dozen or more small cases, depending on the size of the iron. Both shells are best fried or baked the day they are served and filled at the last moment, since they soften as they stand.
The timbale iron belongs to a wide family of European batter-iron cookery, the same principle behind Scandinavian rosettes: a shaped piece of hot metal dipped in thin batter and plunged into fat, producing a hollow form no mold-and-oven method can match. Vol-au-vent is generally traced to early nineteenth-century French pastry work, and the name is what the book says it is, a case so light it might blow away. The Butterick Cook Book came out of a pattern and fashion publisher, and the reasoning at the head of this chapter shows the audience it was written for: an entree is described frankly as "a somewhat elaborate way of serving a left-over," a means of turning yesterday's chicken into a separate course with the formality a middle-class table was expected to keep. The shell does the social work; the filling is thrift.