Vol-au-vent of
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the pastry
Make extremely light puff pastry and roll it out to ¼ inch thick.
Stamp it to the size and shape of the bottom of your dish.
Roll the pastry again and stamp another shape, four times as thick as the first.
Place the thicker piece on top of the first and seal the edges with the yolk of the egg.
Make a slight incision nearly through the pastry all around the top, about 1 inch from the edge.
Bake and hollow
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until lightly browned, about 20 minutes.
Remove the soft crumb from the center without breaking the edges.
Keep it warm until ready to fill with croquettes.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Puff pastry
- Its many thin, layered sheets puff up in the oven to form a light, flaky shell.
- Yolk of 1 egg
- Acts as a glue to seal the stacked pastry layers and promotes browning on the surface.
The step that matters
Making the incision nearly through the pastry. The cut must go almost but not all the way through, so the top lifts cleanly as a lid while the base and walls stay intact. Cutting too deep lets the pastry split, while too shallow stops the top from rising evenly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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