No. 2402

Vol-au-Vent of Oysters

Vol-au-vent d'Huitres

Prepare either one large or sufficient small vol-au-vent (No. 180). Poach a few dozen large oysters in white wine and their own liquor, and when well drained, pare and lay them in a small saucepan. On the other hand, put on to reduce two gills of good bechamel sauce (No. 409), incorporating into it slowly a part of the oyster juice, and when the sauce is considerably reduced and thick, finish it with a little cream; pour this over the oysters, and heat them in a bain-marie (Fig. 122) without allowing them to boil; at the last moment fill the vol-au-vent with this prepared garnishing, and serve very hot.

← No. 2401 Vol-au-Vent of Frogs and Soubise Eggs Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2403 Vol-au-Vent a la Delmontes—Small →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have his puff-paste shell and his béchamel already at hand; the entrée itself is a matter of ten minutes' work at the stove. Everything depends on not overcooking the oysters.

Poach for seconds, not minutesDrop the oysters into the simmering wine and their liquor only until the edges ruffle and firm — 30 seconds to a minute. Held longer they tighten into rubber, and they will take further heat again in the sauce.
Two gills of béchamelA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. Reduced with the oyster liquor and finished with cream it ends up a smaller quantity of thick sauce — roughly enough to bind the 'few dozen' oysters the recipe calls for.
"Pare" the oystersThis means trimming off the tough muscle and any ragged frill after poaching, so each oyster is a neat, tender bite. Do it while they drain.
Strain the liquorOyster liquor carries grit and shell fragments. Pass it through a fine sieve or muslin before you add it to the sauce, and add it gradually — it is salty, and the sauce is being reduced.
Bain-marie means no boilingThe hinge of the dish. Once the oysters are in the sauce they are only warmed through over hot water; a boil curdles the cream-finished béchamel and toughens the oysters at once. A heatproof bowl over barely simmering water does the job.
The vol-au-vent shellNo. 180 is Ranhofer's cross-reference for the puff-paste case, which is baked empty before filling. All-butter frozen puff pastry makes a serviceable substitute, as one large case or as individual shells. Bake in a hot oven (around 400°F) until risen and dry inside, and keep the cases warm — a cold shell chills the filling.
Fill at the last possible momentPastry goes soft within a few minutes of meeting the sauce. Assemble at the table's edge and carry it straight in.
YieldThe recipe fixes no number: 'a few dozen' oysters in one large case, or divided among small ones. As a rough guide, a large vol-au-vent of three or four dozen oysters will serve about six as an entrée.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print. A vol-au-vent — literally "flight in the wind," a name generally credited to French pastry tradition for the lightness of the risen case — was the standard nineteenth-century vehicle for any rich, sauced ragout, and the shell was the cook's showpiece as much as the filling. Oysters belong here because New York in the 1890s was still an oyster city: the beds of the Hudson and Long Island shipped them by the barrel, cellar oyster saloons fed the working city, and Delmonico's served the same shellfish sauced with béchamel and cream at the other end of the price scale. The nearby recipe numbers — frogs with soubise eggs, a Vol-au-Vent a la Delmontes — show how routinely the form was recycled through whatever the market offered.