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Vol-Au-Vent of Salmon
Prepare a puff paste, giving it four turns, then gather it up and leave it in a cold place or ice-box for half an hour. Roll the paste into a ten-inch square, put it on a plate about nine and one-half inches in diameter, and with a sharp knife trim round the edges; put another plate about seven inches in diameter in the center, dip a sharp pointed knife in hot water and cut round the smaller plate, allowing it to go two-thirds of the way through the paste. Put the paste on a flat baking-tin and bake it for three-quarters of an hour, taking care not to allow it to burn. When the vol-au-vent is taken from the oven, lift out the center piece and scoop out the inside with a spoon. Fill it with one and one-half pounds of cooked salmon that has been heated in a thick cream sauce. Place the cover on again and serve immediately.
A single large vol-au-vent case, cut with dinner plates as templates and filled at the last moment. Oscar gives no oven temperature, so the baking is the part that needs translating.
- Oven temperatureOscar gives none. Puff paste of this size wants a hot start and a longer, gentler finish: about 425F for the first 15 minutes to drive the lift, then 375F for the remainder, which should keep the outside from coloring before the interior layers dry.
- "Four turns"Four rolls-and-folds of the butter block, not four separate rests. Classic puff paste is often given six turns; four leaves thicker layers and a coarser rise. Chill 30 minutes as directed, and longer if the kitchen is warm and the butter starts to show.
- The hinge: the two-thirds cutEverything depends on scoring the inner circle only two-thirds through the paste. Cut all the way and the center bakes as a separate disc, leaving no wall to hold the filling; cut too shallow and the lid will not lift cleanly. The hot knife is there to seal rather than drag the layered edge, and it works.
- Plates as templatesA 9.5-inch and a 7-inch plate are simply cutters. Any round guide of those dimensions serves, and an inverted cake pan is steadier than a plate. Trim in a single decisive pass; sawing at the edge compresses the layers and the case rises lopsided.
- Bought puff pastryAll-butter frozen puff pastry works if you overlap two sheets by half an inch, press the seam, and roll to a 10-inch square about a quarter-inch thick. It will rise somewhat less than a four-turn house paste, so expect a shallower cavity.
- The salmon and the sauceA pound and a half of cooked salmon means poached or leftover fish, flaked in large pieces. Oscar has it heated in the thick cream sauce, so warm it through gently rather than simmering it to shreds. Make the sauce stiff enough to mound on a spoon or it will soak the case from the inside; a bechamel with a scant cup of milk per two tablespoons each butter and flour is about right.
- Serve immediatelyThis is not a make-ahead dish. The case can be baked and hollowed several hours ahead and left uncovered at room temperature, but fill it as close to serving as possible; the base softens quickly once the hot filling is in.
- YieldAbout six portions as a main course, cut in wedges through case and filling together with a serrated knife.
Vol-au-vent means "flight in the wind," a name traditionally explained by how little the baked shell weighs for its size; its invention is generally traced to Antonin Careme and the Paris pastry kitchens of the early nineteenth century, though the attribution is repeated more often than it is documented. By the 1890s the form was standard grand-hotel service: a showy hollow case that could be baked in advance and filled with whatever the kitchen had ready, from sweetbreads to oysters to salmon in cream. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms rather than its stoves, recorded the house methods for a public that read such books partly to cook from and partly to see how the famous hotels did things. The choice of salmon here reflects its status as a prestige fish in the period, and the instruction to cut a lid with a hot knife is precisely the sort of workroom detail that separates a hotel manual from a domestic cookbook.