No. 180

Vol-au-Vent Crust

Croute de vol-au-vent

Prepare a puff paste with one pound of fine, dry flour and one pound of good butter, proceeding as for No. 146; give it six and a half turns, and when the paste is made, lay it on a floured baking tin, and set on top of it a model of tin or heavy cardboard having the exact dimensions desired for the vol-an-vent, cut the paste all around this with a small, heated knife, following the outlines of the model, but keeping the knife slightly inclined outward. As soon as the vol-au-vent is cut, turn it with one stroke upside down on to another dampened round baking sheet, being careful not to injure its shape; groove the edges lightly with the back of a knife as represented in in the plate (Fig. 112); egg the surface over, and trace a ring, using the tip of a small knife an inch and a half from the edge, then in the center of this ring trace four or five light incisions to form lozenges. Bake the vol-au-vent in a hot oven for thirty minutes or more according to its size, opening the oven as little as possible. When the paste is dry and a fine color, take it out, open it by lifting up the center cover, and empty it of all the uncooked paste within, lay the vol-au-vent on to a dish, and keep it warm in the heater, not allowing the crust to get cold before using it. Small vol-au-vent crusts may be prepared the same way, using a three and a half inch pastry cutter to cut them with.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is Ranhofer's method for the large hollow puff-paste case that holds a creamed filling. Everything about it is aimed at getting the walls to climb straight and evenly, and most of the failures come from the cutting rather than the baking.

The hinge: how you hold the knifeCut with a thin blade held slightly inclined outward, as Ranhofer directs, so the cut face is bevelled rather than straight. A blade dragged straight down, or a dull one, smears the layers together at the edge and the case rises lopsided or not at all. Ranhofer specifies a heated knife; keeping it warm and clean between cuts keeps it from tearing.
Puff paste proportionsEqual weights of flour and butter by the pound is full puff paste, the richest of the classical grades. Use unsalted butter with the lowest water content available and keep the détrempe and the butter block at the same firmness. The "six and a half turns" follow the folding method of No. 146, to which Ranhofer refers the reader.
"A hot oven"Ranhofer gives no figure; a hot oven for puff paste is conventionally taken as somewhere around 425F. The case needs violent early steam to lift the layers, then it dries out over the balance of the thirty minutes. Ranhofer's instruction to open the oven as little as possible is not fussiness -- a draught of cool air collapses the rise before the structure has set.
The modelA tin or stiff cardboard template cut to whatever diameter is wanted; Ranhofer says only that it should have the exact dimensions desired. Any flat circle will do: a cake tin base or a plate traced onto card. It exists only to give a clean, consistent outline.
"Egg the surface over"Brush the top with beaten egg, and keep it strictly off the cut sides. Egg that runs down the edge glues the laminations shut and the case rises unevenly on that side.
The traced ringThe score an inch and a half from the edge, cut perhaps a third of the way down, becomes the lid you lift off after baking. The lozenge marks inside it are decoration on that lid.
"The heater"A plate-warming cupboard, the hot closet of a nineteenth-century range. A modern oven held at 200F does the same job. The instruction not to let the crust go cold is practical: a cooled case turns leathery and will not take a hot sauce without going soft.
Emptying itThe soft, underbaked paste is scooped out of the middle; Ranhofer says only to empty the case of it. If the interior is still wet rather than merely soft, the case went into too cool an oven and the whole thing will slump once filled.

A Little History

Vol-au-vent -- "flight on the wind" -- describes a case so light it might blow away, and the name is generally traced to the pastry work of Antonin Carême in early nineteenth-century Paris, though the puff-paste shell itself is older than the phrase. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, files this under Elementary Methods rather than among the finished dishes because the crust is infrastructure: it is a vessel to be filled later with a ragoût of sweetbreads, chicken, oysters or financière garnish, each of which gets its own entry. That division tells you how a large brigade worked. The pastry cook made cases in quantity and held them warm; the saucier made the filling; the two met only at the moment of service, which is why Ranhofer insists so firmly that the crust must not be allowed to go cold before it is used.