No. 2400

Salt Codfish Vol-au-Vent-Large

Gros Vol-au-vent de Morue Salee

Cut some salted codfish in two-inch pieces, pare them evenly, and lay in cold water to soak for twenty-four hours, changing the water every six hours; the last change must be slightly tepid. When ready to cook put it into a saucepan containing cold water; bring this slowly to a boiling point and leave for three-quarters of an hour without allowing it to actually boil; drain, take off all the skin and bones, and then shred it in flakes; put these in a saucepan with cream bechamel sauce (No. 411). With this prepared fish fill a vol-au-vent crust the same as described in No. 180, dress it on a very hot dish, and serve.

It can also be prepared with eggs, adding to the fish hard-boiled eggs and finely chopped parsley and chives.

← No. 2399 Chicken Vol-au-Vent with Mushrooms-Large Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2401 Vol-au-Vent of Frogs and Soubise Eggs →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade, a stocked larder and a cross-referenced book; the dish itself is salt cod creamed and spooned into a puff pastry case. Two things decide whether it works: the soak and the fact that the fish must never boil.

The soak is not optionalHard salt cod (bacalao, morue) needs a full 24 hours in cold water in the refrigerator, with the water poured off and replaced every six hours. Taste a sliver at the end; if it is still aggressively salty, keep going. Ranhofer asks for the last change to be "slightly tepid"; he does not say why, but it eases the fish toward cooking temperature and is worth doing.
Do not let it boilBring the pan up slowly and hold it at a bare shiver, around 170-180F. Boiling drives the flakes apart and toughens the muscle. The three-quarters of an hour in the original suits a thick, board-stiff nineteenth-century cure; modern lightly salted cod fillet is done in 10 to 15 minutes at that temperature. Test with a fork rather than a clock.
Cream bechamelNo. 411 is Ranhofer's cream bechamel; the recipe here does not spell it out, so you must either follow that entry or substitute. A standard bechamel of 2 oz butter, 2 oz flour and a pint of milk, simmered until it loses any floury taste and then let down with a few tablespoons of heavy cream, will stand in. Season with white pepper and nutmeg and taste before adding any salt at all; the fish carries plenty.
The vol-au-vent crustNo. 180 is Ranhofer's large puff pastry case, baked hollow; this entry gives no dimensions, so work to the size of dish you intend to serve. All-butter frozen puff pastry gives a good result: two rounds, the top one cut with an inner ring most of the way through, egg-washed and baked at 400F until risen and deep gold, then the inner disc lifted out and the raw centre scooped away.
Fill at the last momentA creamed filling in a pastry case turns the base to paste within minutes. Have the crust hot from the oven and the fish hot in its sauce, combine them at the pass, and carry the dish straight to the table. This is why Ranhofer specifies "a very hot dish."
ConsistencyThe filling should be thick enough to mound on a spoon. If the fish releases liquid into the sauce, let it reduce before filling, or the case will collapse.
The egg variationChopped hard-boiled egg with parsley and chives makes this closer to a household dish than a restaurant one; roughly three eggs to a pound of soaked fish. Add the herbs off the heat so they keep their colour.
YieldA pound of dried salt cod will gain roughly half its weight again in soaking, which with about a pint of sauce should fill a large case and serve six to eight as an entree.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole repertoire in one numbered, cross-referenced volume, which is why this page sends you to No. 411 for the sauce and No. 180 for the crust. Salt cod on a fashionable New York menu is less surprising than it looks: the Atlantic cod fishery was one of the oldest industries in New England, dried cod was a staple of both the carriage trade and the tenement, and French cookery had a long line of dishes, from brandade to morue a la creme, that turned preserved fish into something worth serving in pastry. The vol-au-vent itself, a case of puff pastry baked hollow and filled at the last minute, is generally traced to the early nineteenth-century Parisian kitchen and to Careme's circle; the name means roughly "flight in the wind," a nod to how little the risen shell weighs. Its appearance here, alongside chicken with mushrooms and a case of frogs, shows the form doing exactly what it did best on a large table: making a modest filling look like an occasion.