Skip to main content
Dessert

Small Vols-au-vent, or Patty-cases

Small puff pastry cases filled with sweetmeats or savory items, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Small Vols-au-vent, or Patty-cases

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry

  1. Make puff paste and give it six or seven turns, wetting the top with water or lemon juice before the last turn.

  2. Roll out the paste to about ⅓ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut out circles with a 2-inch circular cutter.

  2. Use a smaller cutter to press into the tops, sinking halfway through the crust.

  3. Brush the tops with beaten egg, avoiding the edges.

  4. Sprinkle sugar if filling with sweetmeats.

  5. Bake until golden.

Hollow and fill

  1. Remove the tops.

  2. Cut out the centers without damaging the outsides.

  3. Keep warm until ready to fill.

  4. Cover with the tops.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Puff paste
Thin layers of butter and dough puff in the oven to form the hollow, flaky case.
Beaten egg
Coats the tops to give them a glossy, golden browning as they bake.
Sugar
Helps the tops brown and adds sweetness when filling with sweetmeats.

The step that matters

Sinking the inner cutter halfway through the crust. Cutting too deep can cut through the pastry, while too shallow a cut stops the centre from lifting cleanly; the cut sets the lid line so the case rises evenly and the lid sits neatly once hollowed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes