No. 2408

Vol-au-Vent of Salmon Trout a la Regence—Small

Petits Vol-au-vent de Truite Saumonee a la Regence

The only difference between bouchees and small vol-au-vent is that bouchees are filled with either a salpicon or a puree, while vol-au-vent are filled with small, distinct garnishings. Prepare eight or ten small vol-au-vent crusts (No. 180); cook them in a brisk oven; remove and detach them from the pan, impress a hollow in the center with the finger and keep them warm. Put into a small saucepan a garnishing composed of a pound of salmon-trout escalops, twelve small poached oysters, twelve mushrooms or cut up morils, twelve small fish quenelles (No. 90) rolled on a floured table and poached, also some small cut-up poached milts; cover these with a rich and very hot Normande sauce (No. 509), finishing with a piece of lobster butter (No. 580). Fill the warm vol-au-vent crusts with this garnishing, cover lightly with some of the sauce instead of a lid, and close the aperture with a pretty mushroom head, turned and very white, left in its natural state. Dress the vol-au-vent at once on folded napkins; they can also be filled with one garnishing only.

COLD SERVICE (Service Froid).

← No. 2407 Vol-au-Vent of Reedbirds, Diplomate—Small Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2409 Cold Dishes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stocked larder, so this entry is really an assembly instruction resting on four other numbered recipes. Everything can be prepared ahead and brought together at the last minute, which is the point of the dish.

The hinge: the sauce must not boilNormande sauce (No. 509) is a fish velouté generally enriched with cream and finished with egg yolks; the lobster butter (No. 580) is best worked in off the heat. Once the liaison and the butter are in, hold it below a simmer or it will break and go grainy.
A brisk ovenConventionally taken as roughly 425–450°F for the puff paste cases; Ranhofer gives no temperature. They need the initial blast to lift; drop to about 375°F if the tops colour before the layers have set.
Cross-referencesNo. 180 is Ranhofer's puff paste for vol-au-vent cases, No. 90 the forcemeat for quenelles. Good all-butter commercial puff pastry and 2-inch fluted cutters give the same result; bought bouchée shells work if you crisp them in the oven first.
Milts"Milt" is soft roe — the sperm sac of a male fish, usually herring or carp, poached and sliced. It is rarely sold in the U.S. now; look in Japanese markets for shirako, or simply leave it out, as the recipe itself allows a single garnish.
MorilsMorels. Fresh ones must be cooked through, never eaten raw or undercooked; dried morels rehydrated in warm water are the ordinary substitute, and the strained soaking liquid can go into the sauce.
EscalopsThin, evenly cut slices of the trout fillet, poached briefly in court-bouillon or fish stock. Two or three minutes is enough for pieces this thin; they finish cooking in the hot sauce.
OystersPoach them only until the edges ruffle — under a minute in their own liquor. Overcooked oysters turn to rubber, and here they sit in hot sauce afterwards as well.
Yield and serviceEight to ten small cases, so two apiece for four or five people as an entrée. "Dress on folded napkins" means the serving platter is lined with a folded linen napkin, which absorbs butter and keeps the cases from sliding; it is decorative rather than functional today.
Salmon troutA large lake or sea trout in nineteenth-century American usage, not the modern retail "salmon trout" label. Steelhead, a big rainbow trout, or the tail end of a side of salmon all serve.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how systematically that kitchen worked: the dish exists mainly as a set of pointers to numbered preparations elsewhere in the book. The name à la Régence nods to the French Regency of Philippe d'Orléans (1715–23), a period later cooks invoked as shorthand for lavishness; by the nineteenth century a Régence garnish generally meant an assortment of costly small elements — quenelles, truffles, mushroom heads, cockscombs, soft roe — bound in a rich sauce, with the fish version built on Normande. Vol-au-vent, "flight in the wind," is credited by tradition to Carême, though the puff-paste case long predates him. Ranhofer's opening distinction is worth keeping: a bouchée holds something diced or puréed, a vol-au-vent holds pieces you can still identify on the fork.