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Vol-au-Vents with Strawberries
Prepare one pound of puff-paste, giving it six and a half turns; roll it out to about one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and with a fluted cutter about two inches in diameter cut about thirty rounds. Then cut out the center of these with a cutter one and one-fourth inches in diameter. Work up the balance of the paste and with it form an equal number of rings cut out in the same manner. Place them on top of one another. Have ready four ounces of sugar boiled to the caramel degree, dip the tops of the vol-au-vents into it, and afterward into coarsely-sifted loaf-sugar, and bake in a brisk oven. Put three ounces more of sugar into the saucepan with the caramel, reduce it again to the caramel degree, then add about one teacupful of the strained juice of strawberries. Fill the vol-au-vent cases with whole strawberries, cover with the syrup, and serve.
A late-Victorian hotel pastry: miniature puff-paste rings, glazed with caramel and coarse sugar, filled with berries at the last moment. Nothing here is difficult, but the sugar work and the timing of the assembly decide whether it succeeds.
- Assemble at the last minuteThe cases must be filled and sauced immediately before they go to the table. Strawberry juice and caramel syrup will soften the pastry within minutes, and a soggy vol-au-vent is the one failure this dish cannot recover from.
- Six and a half turnsA turn is one roll-out and fold of the chilled butter block. Six turns is the classic full puff paste; what the extra half denoted in period usage is not settled, and it is often taken as the final rolling-out rather than an extra fold. Commercial all-butter puff pastry, rolled to one-eighth inch, is a reasonable substitute if you are not making your own.
- A brisk ovenUsually glossed at somewhere between 400 and 450F. Puff paste needs high initial heat to throw steam and lift the layers. Given that the tops carry caramel and sugar, watch closely and drop the heat if the glaze begins to darken past amber.
- The caramel degreeSugar boiled to caramel is roughly 320-350F, past hard crack and into colour. Work with a dry pan or a little water, no stirring once it boils, and have the pastry rings ready to dip because caramel sets in seconds.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was hard refined sugar sold in cones or blocks, broken up as needed. "Coarsely-sifted" means the larger crumbs from crushing it. Pearl or Swedish nib sugar is the modern equivalent; coarse sanding sugar will do.
- A teacupfulTeacup measures vary in nineteenth-century books, roughly four to six fluid ounces; take it as somewhere between half and three-quarters of a cup. Adding cold juice to hot caramel will spatter and can seize the sugar; add it off the heat, in a slow stream, then return the pan to low heat and stir until the caramel dissolves into a syrup.
- The stackingYou cut thirty fluted rounds, remove the centres, then cut an equal number of rings from the trimmings and set one on top of each. That gives shallow two-layer cases about a quarter inch of wall; for a deeper case that holds more fruit, stack two or three rings per base.
- YieldThirty two-inch cases, so eight to ten as a dessert, three or four to a plate.
The vol-au-vent -- "flight in the wind", for pastry so light it might blow away -- is generally traced to the Paris kitchens of the early nineteenth century and is often credited to Carême, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. It normally arrives as a savoury: a tall case of puff paste filled with creamed sweetbreads, chicken or fish. Here the form shrinks to a two-inch petit four, caramel-glazed and packed with whole berries: a French classical form miniaturised, sweetened and made portable across a long banquet menu. The strawberries themselves signal the same thing. Hothouse and Southern-shipped fruit reached New York hotels well outside the local June season.