No. 2406

Vol-au-Vent, Parisian Style—Small

Petits Vol-au-vent a la Parisienne

Have a brown (No. 414) or Madeira sauce (No. 492) and add to it some half-inch squares of veal or lamb sweetbreads, stoned olives cut in four, turned mushrooms (No. 118) and small chicken quenelles. Fill prepared small vol-au-vent crusts with this garnishing and range trussed crawfish on top, then cover.

← No. 2405 Vol-au-Vent of Oysters a la Maintenon—Small Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2407 Vol-au-Vent of Reedbirds, Diplomate—Small →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly note rather than a full recipe: Ranhofer assumes you have his brown sauce, his mushroom technique and his puff pastry cases already in hand. The work is in the components, and everything hinges on the filling being thick enough to sit in a pastry shell without soaking it.

Sauce consistency is the hingeA brown or Madeira sauce here should be reduced to a nappe that coats a spoon heavily — closer to a thick gravy than a pouring sauce. Anything thinner risks soaking through and collapsing the pastry walls.
The cross-referencesThe recipe sends you to No. 414 for brown sauce, No. 492 for Madeira sauce and No. 118 for turned mushrooms; No. 414 is Ranhofer's espagnole-type brown sauce, and No. 492 appears to be a Madeira-finished version of it. Turning mushrooms means channelling the caps. Any well-made demi-glace or a Madeira pan sauce built on good brown stock will stand in; plain fluted or quartered mushrooms sautéed in butter are fine if you have no interest in turning them.
SweetbreadsVeal or lamb sweetbreads must be soaked in several changes of cold water for a few hours, blanched, refreshed, pressed under a weight, then peeled of membrane before being cut into the half-inch dice. Bought sweetbreads are usually veal; lamb sweetbreads are a special order from a butcher.
Chicken quenellesSmall forcemeat dumplings of pounded raw chicken, egg white and cream, shaped with two teaspoons and poached gently in salted water or light stock at a bare shiver — never a boil, which makes them break up. Poach them separately and add at the last moment so they do not turn grey in the sauce.
Trussed crawfishNineteenth-century garnish: whole cooked crawfish with the tail bent back and the claws hooked in so they hold a neat curled shape. They are decoration set on top before the pastry lid goes on, not part of the filling.
Vol-au-vent crustsSmall cases means individual puff pastry shells with their lids cut off; Ranhofer gives no dimensions here. All-butter frozen puff pastry works; by modern practice bake at around 400F until fully risen and dry inside, and hollow out any damp centre before filling.
OlivesRanhofer specifies only "stoned olives cut in four." Plain brined olives, stoned and quartered, suit the sauce; rinse them if they are aggressively salty.
Assembly and yieldFill only immediately before serving, with the filling hot and the shells warm. As written this is a garnish quantity for formal service; Ranhofer gives no measurements, so amounts are left to the cook's judgement.

A Little History

Vol-au-vent — "flight in the wind", a name generally traced to the lightness of the risen puff pastry — belongs to the grand French service that Charles Ranhofer brought to Delmonico's in New York, where he was chef for over thirty years before publishing The Epicurean in 1894. The book is arranged as a professional reference: entries like this one are shorthand for a kitchen brigade that already had brown sauce, quenelle forcemeat and cooked sweetbreads standing by, which is why the instruction runs to two sentences and three cross-references. "A la Parisienne" in this period signalled no fixed formula so much as a register — sweetbreads, mushrooms, quenelles, a Madeira-based sauce, and a showy shellfish garnish crowning the dish. The trussed crawfish on top is pure banquet display, the sort of detail that separated a restaurant course from a home one.