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Vol-au-Vent of Fruits
Prepare a vol-au-vent case of puff paste. Bake it in a moderate oven and cover it with royal icing. Scald and sweeten one breakfast cupful of cream, stir in twelve preserved cherries and six apricots cut in halves, and add two tablespoonfuls of orange-flower water. Put two ounces of macaroons at the bottom of the case, pour in the cream mixture, also two bananas cut in slices and three rings of angelica, put another two ounces of macaroons on the top, and serve.
A late-Victorian dessert built on a pre-baked puff pastry shell, filled cold and served at once. The original assumes you already know how to raise a vol-au-vent case, and it is vague about the cream, which is the part that decides whether the dish holds together.
- Oven for the casePuff paste generally needs more heat than "moderate" implies to rise properly; a hot start to raise and set the pastry, then a slacker oven to dry the interior, is the usual modern practice. The original gives no temperature beyond "moderate."
- Royal icing on pastryThe icing goes onto the baked case and is left to set firm and white; a barely warm oven speeds the drying. Do not ice a warm case or the sugar will slide off.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup runs 8 to 10 fl oz. Take it as a generous cup of cream.
- The cream needs bodyScalded, sweetened cream alone is liquid and will flood the case and soak the pastry within minutes. The original gives no thickening; a cooked pastry cream or a lightly whipped sweetened cream gives the mixture something to hold the fruit.
- Orange-flower waterTwo tablespoons of modern distilled orange-flower water is overpowering and will taste soapy. Strength varied a good deal between makers; start with a teaspoon and taste.
- MacaroonsThese are almond macaroons, crisp and dry, not the coconut kind. They are layered under and over the cream.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stem, sold in bright green lengths and once standard in confectionery. It is now a specialist item; candied citron or a strip of candied peel serves the same decorative purpose.
- Assemble lastEverything in the case is cold and wet, and the shell is the whole point. Fill within a few minutes of serving.
- YieldThe original gives no case size. A vol-au-vent of the usual dinner size, cut in wedges, will serve six to eight.
The vol-au-vent -- the name is usually glossed as "flight in the wind," for the lightness of the raised puff paste -- is traditionally associated with the early nineteenth-century Parisian kitchen and with Carême, though the attribution is not firmly documented, and it reached English and American tables chiefly as a savoury container for ragouts of chicken, sweetbreads or oysters. Turning it out as a dessert, iced white and packed with preserved fruit, macaroons and angelica, is the sort of thing a large hotel kitchen could do because it already had the pastry, the compotes and the confectionery on hand. Oscar Tschirky's book records the working repertoire of the Waldorf at the end of the 1890s; the preserved cherries, apricots and orange-flower water all belong to that pantry, where candied and bottled fruit was the year-round standard and bananas were a relative novelty.