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Patty Shells

Patty shells are puff pastry shells filled with oysters, brains, sweetbreads, mushrooms, or other cooked meats in a thick cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Patty Shells

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll puff pastry to ¼ inch thick and cut with a biscuit cutter, dipping the cutter in hot water to prevent sticking.

  2. Stamp out the centers from two-thirds of the pieces using a smaller cutter.

  3. Brush a little egg white on the edges of the large rounds, avoiding the edges to ensure they rise.

  4. Optionally, stack two or three rims for a deeper shell and varnish the inside with egg yolk.

  5. Cut a thick slice of stale bread with the small cutter and place it in the center to prevent the pastry from rising.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake on shallow tins lined with paper, removing the bread once done.

  2. Bake the small cut-out pieces on a separate pan.

  3. Fill the shells with warmed oysters, brains, sweetbreads, mushrooms, or any cooked meat in a thick cream sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Its layers puff up in the oven to form the light, flaky shell.
Egg white
Brushed on the edges to help the rims stick and rise cleanly.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the inside to give the shell a browned, glossy finish.
Stale bread
Placed in the centre to hold the pastry down so it rises mainly at the rim.
Cream sauce
Thickens and moistens the filling so it sits richly inside the shell.

The step that matters

Avoid cutting or brushing the pastry edges. Puff pastry rises by steam forcing its layers apart. Egg white or cut edges that are sealed or dragged can stop the rim from lifting, so the shell stays flat and dense.

“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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