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Chicken Vol Au Vent, Hay
Carefully skin and bone a tender, raw chicken of two and a half to three pounds and cut all the meat into inch-square pieces. Heat one tablespoon melted butter in a large frying pan and add the chicken. Season with a heavy teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne pepper; gently cook on the range for eight minutes, occasionally tossing. Add six peeled, well-cleaned, sliced heads fresh mushrooms; lightly toss again and let slowly cook for five minutes. Dredge in a teaspoon flour, lightly mixing while doing so. Pour in half pint cold milk, gently mix and slowly boil for ten minutes. Add a small sliced truffle, one gill cream and a tablespoon Madeira wine; lightly mix and boil for five minutes; add half teaspoon chopped chives; dilute an egg yolk in a tablespoon milk and add to the chicken; lightly mix while heating, without boiling, for two minutes. Remove and fill up a vol au vent with the preparation. Cover it and serve.
FEUILLETAGE (PUFF PASTE) Sift one pound flour on a small table; make a fountain in the centre pour into it half pint ice water, adding half teaspoon salt. Briskly knead with the hand, gradually incorporating the flour until a perfect dough; then let rest for fifteen minutes.
Wash well a pound good butter in a quart ice water; then knead the butter on the table with the hand, give a square flat form and keep in a cool place. Flour the table, roll out the paste to one-third larger than the butter, place the butter on top, fold up the four corners to completely envelop the butter; then with the pastry roller, roll out to one-inch-thick square form. Then fold up the paste in three folds without separating. Roll it out from the top with the roller to one inch longer only, of a square form; this operation is usually termed "turn." Give the paste half a turn to the right with the hand and roll it out to the same thickness as before; fold up the same as before-then the paste will have two "turns." Place it on a tin enveloped in a towel and let rest in a cool place for twenty minutes. Then give two more turns as before; let rest for twenty minutes again. Give two similar turns and let rest in a cool place until required, always enveloped in a clean lightly wetted towel.
HOW TO MAKE THE VOL AU VENT Roll out on a lightly floured table one pound feuilletage to three-quarters of an inch in thickness; then with a round six-inch pastry cutter cut out a piece. Lightly wet a small cold pastry pan, place the cut-out piece of feuilletage in the pan upside down; lightly egg the surface; then with the point of a knife carefully cut a ring on the surface of the paste half an inch deep and one inch from the outer edge. Be very careful not to exceed the depth of half an inch in cutting, leaving quarter of an inch uncut. Make four incisions, lengthwise, on the centre piece of the paste in the pan and set in the oven to bake moderately for forty minutes. Remove from the oven, lift up the cover of the vol au vent, carefully remove all the uncooked paste from the interior and keep in a warm place until required.
A two-part project: a creamed chicken fricassee thickened with an egg liaison, and a large puff-pastry case to hold it. The pastry is the longer job, so start it first — or buy all-butter puff and cut the work to an afternoon.
- The hinge: the egg yolkOnce the diluted yolk goes in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle into grains. Two minutes over low heat, stirring, is all it takes and all it can stand.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz); half a pint of milk is one cup. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of cayenne is roughly half a teaspoon — assertive for three pounds of chicken. Start with a quarter teaspoon if you are unsure.
- "Heads" of mushroomsSix mushroom heads means six caps, stems removed — about 6 oz of cultivated white or cremini mushrooms. Peeling is unnecessary with modern mushrooms; wipe them instead.
- Oven heat for the caseThe book says only 'bake moderately' and gives no temperature. Modern puff is generally started in a hot oven to set the rise before the heat is lowered; the forty minutes is the book's own figure for a case this size.
- One tablespoon of butter, one teaspoon of flourThat is a very thin binding for a cup of milk plus cream. The sauce is meant to be loose and held together mostly by reduction and the yolk. If you want it thicker, raise the butter and flour together to a tablespoon each and cook the roux briefly before the milk.
- Truffle and MadeiraA fresh black truffle is optional in every practical sense; a teaspoon of good truffle paste or simply an extra tablespoon of Madeira carries the same intent. Use dry or medium-dry Madeira, not the cooking wine sold in the vinegar aisle.
- Washing the butterKneading butter under ice water was standard practice when butter was salted heavily and unevenly, and often wet. With modern unsalted butter, skip it — just beat the cold block into a flat square between sheets of parchment.
- Six turns, not six foldsEach "turn" here is one fold in three. The recipe gives six turns with rests between pairs, which is a classic full puff. Keep the dough and the room cold; if butter breaks through, chill 30 minutes before continuing.
- YieldA six-inch case filled with the boned meat of a two-and-a-half to three-pound chicken serves about four as a main course, six as a first course. Serve promptly — puff pastry softens once filled.
The vol-au-vent takes its name from the French for "flight in the wind," a comment on how little the baked case weighs relative to its size; its invention is traditionally credited to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century, though the puff-paste techniques it depends on are older than that attribution. Its appeal to late nineteenth-century American hotel and restaurant cooking was practical as well as theatrical: the case could be baked in advance, held warm, and filled at the moment of service with whatever creamed mixture the kitchen had ready — chicken, sweetbreads, oysters, fish. The surname appended to the title follows the convention of this book, where dishes are catalogued under the names of patrons, chefs, or diners associated with them rather than described by method.