No. 2396

Vol-au-Vent a la Financiere

Vol-au-vent a la Financiere

Prepare a vol-au-vent crust as explained in No. 180; when cooked lift off the cover, empty out the interior and keep it warm. Prepare a garnishing of whole peeled truffles, turned and channeled mushroom heads (No. 118), cocks'-combs and quenelles, as many of one as of the other, and enough to fill the crust; put this garnishing into a sautoir and mingle in a financiere sauce (No. 464). When very hot pour it into the crust, dressing the cocks'-combs in a circle, and inside of this the truffles and mushrooms, having a fine braised, larded and well-glazed sweetbread on top. The financiere garnishing can be replaced by a Toulouse (No. 766) or Aquitaine (No. 640) garnishing.

← No. 2395 Vol-au-Vent a la Dieppoise Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2397 Vol-au-Vent a la Nesle →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already going and a pastry cook down the hall; the numbered cross-references stand in for whole chapters. Here is what the shorthand hides.

Assemble at the last possible momentThis is the hinge. The garnish must be fully hot and the sauce thick enough to coat before it goes into the case, and the filled vol-au-vent must go straight to the table. A puff case left standing with a wet ragout in it will soften.
The crust (No. 180)A puff pastry case: rounds of puff, the top marked with an inner ring to form a lid, baked until fully dry, then the lid lifted off and the soft interior scooped out, as the recipe directs. It must be baked out thoroughly — an underbaked case will not hold sauce. Ranhofer gives no oven temperature and no size for the case here.
Cocks' combsCleaned, blanched and simmered cockscombs were a standard 19th-century garnish and are effectively unobtainable now outside specialist butchers. Omit them and increase the mushrooms and quenelles, or use small braised chicken oysters; the decorative ring will be lost but nothing else will.
Financière sauce (No. 464)A Madeira-flavoured demi-glace finished with truffle essence and truffle trimmings. A well-reduced veal or brown chicken stock, mounted with Madeira and a little butter, gets you to the same place; it should nap the garnish, not pool.
TrufflesWhole peeled truffles by the handful reflect 1890s Delmonico's pricing, not a domestic budget. A single small truffle sliced, plus a spoonful of truffle-infused reduction in the sauce, reads correctly. Do not substitute truffle oil in the sauce, which turns acrid when hot.
QuenellesPoached forcemeat dumplings of veal or chicken bound with panada and cream, shaped with two spoons and poached in barely trembling salted stock at about 175F. They must be firm before they meet the sauce or they will break apart in the sautoir.
The sweetbreadVeal sweetbreads need several hours of cold soaking with changes of water, a blanch, then pressing between plates under a weight before they can be larded and braised. "Well-glazed" means the braising liquid reduced to a syrup and brushed over at the end. Budget most of a day, or braise it the day before and glaze it as the case bakes.
Turned and channeled mushroom heads (No. 118)Firm white caps, stems trimmed flush and the tops scored in curved flutes with a paring knife, then cooked in water with lemon and butter to keep them pale. Purely visual; plain small caps taste the same.
SautoirA shallow, straight-sided pan. The point is surface area — the garnish is warmed through in the sauce without being stirred hard enough to break the quenelles.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style exactly: a dish defined less by cooking than by assembly, with the labour distributed across several other numbered recipes. Vol-au-vent means roughly "flight in the wind," a name generally traced to the lightness of the puff case and traditionally credited to Antonin Carême's kitchen in early 19th-century Paris. The garnish name is period slang made permanent: à la financière is often said to have evoked the truffles, cockscombs and Madeira that a financier could afford, and by Ranhofer's day it had hardened into a fixed combination that any classically trained cook would recognise from the phrase alone — which is why he could offer Toulouse or Aquitaine as swaps without explaining either. The cockscombs and the larded sweetbread are the clearest marker of the era, from a time when offal and trimmings were luxury garnish rather than curiosities.