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Meat Stuffing for Vol-Au-Vent
(Ripieno di carne per pasticcini di pasta sfoglia) This stuffing can be made either with stewed veal or chicken giblets or sweetbreads. The latter are preferable, being more delicate and a taste of truffles greatly improves the stuffing. If sweetbreads are used, put them on the fire with a piece of butter and season with salt and pepper.
When they have begun to take color, complete the cooking with some brown stock, then cut them in pieces as little as a bean. Add one or two spoons of Balsamella (see No. 54) a little tongue, one or two slices of ham cut in little squares, a pinch of grated cheese and a taste of nutmeg, seeing that the ingredients are in such quantities as to make the mixture tasty and delicate. Leave it cool well, as in this way it hardens and can be worked better.
In order to enclose it in patè shells made with puff-paste (see No. 57) there are two ways. One is to cook the shells filled with the stuffing, the other to fill them after they are cooked. In the first case put the stuffing in the prepared disk of paste, moisten the edge with a wet finger, cover with another disk of paste and cook. In the second case, which is more convenient because the shells can be prepared one day before, the two disks are put together without the stuffing, but in the upper disk a circular cut must be made as large as a half dollar coin. The pàtè on cooking swells and leaves an empty space in the interior.
Lifting with the point of a knife the little circle above, which has the form of a cover, the interior space can be made larger, filled with the stuffing and covered with the little cover. In this way it is enough to warm them before sending to the table. The puff-paste must always be glazed with the yolk of eggs.
If a large vol-au-vent is to be filled instead of little patè-shells, a ragout of chicken giblets and sweetbread, cut in large pieces, is better. 66
A filling for puff-pastry cases, written for cooks who already knew how to handle sweetbreads and béchamel. The critical instruction is the one about cooling: a warm filling will steam and collapse the pastry, and it cannot be handled at all until it sets.
- Balsamella is béchamelThe recipe cross-references No. 54, a flour-butter-milk white sauce. One or two spoonfuls is all that is wanted here, and it should be thick enough to hold its shape on the spoon, since it is the binder for the diced meat.
- Sweetbreads need preparation firstCalf sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas) are usually soaked in several changes of cold water for a few hours, blanched briefly, then cooled and the membrane peeled away before they go in the butter. The original does not mention this step. Cook them through in the stock, not just to colour.
- Brown stockA dark veal or beef stock, reduced. Use unsalted or lightly salted stock so the ham, tongue and cheese can carry the seasoning without the mixture going over.
- Chicken giblets means hearts and gizzardsChicken giblets -- "Giblets" (rigaglie) generally covers the cleaned interior trim and may include the liver. If you use the liver, keep it separate and add it at the end, since it needs only a couple of minutes and turns grainy with longer stewing.
- Dice size"As little as a bean" is somewhere around 1/4 to 1/2 inch. The point is that the filling must spoon into a small shell, so anything larger will tear the pastry.
- The half dollar coinA US half dollar is about 1 1/4 inches across, so score a circle of that size in the top disk. Cut only through the top layer of pastry; a cut that goes all the way through gives you a hole, not a lid.
- Oven for the puff pasteBake at 400-425F. High heat is what turns the water in the butter to steam and lifts the layers; a moderate oven gives flat, greasy shells. Egg-yolk glaze goes on the top only, and should not run down the cut edges, which will glue the layers shut.
- Reheating the filled shellsFor the second method, warm the filled patties in a moderate oven only long enough to take the chill off. Longer and the pastry softens from the inside.
Vol-au-vent is French, literally "flight in the wind," a name for a pastry case so light it seems ready to blow away; its invention is traditionally credited to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century, though the claim rests on kitchen lore rather than documents. Its appearance here, under the Italian gloss pasticcini di pasta sfoglia, is a good indicator of how thoroughly French technique had settled into the repertoire of the well-off Italian household kitchen by the late 1800s. This book, published in English in 1919, draws heavily on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891), which is why the instructions read like advice from one experienced cook to another, with cross-references to a numbered béchamel and a numbered puff paste rather than a full ingredient list. The reliance on sweetbreads, tongue and truffle also marks the period: these were prestige items on a middle-class table.