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Vol Au Vent of Oysters

A puff pastry shell filled with oysters in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Vol Au Vent of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the shell

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the puff pastry and roll it out to about ½ inch thick.

  3. Cut out a shape for the vol au vent and make an incision in the center.

  4. Egg wash the top of the pastry and bake until risen and golden.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, scald the oysters in their liquor, then remove and beard them.

  2. Strain the oyster liquor and set aside.

  3. In the same saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  4. Add the strained oyster liquor, lemon juice, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, stirring until thickened.

  5. Finally, stir in the cream and add the oysters, cooking briefly before filling the pastry.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and the tender filling pieces.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour through the roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and oyster liquor into a smooth sauce.
Egg
Gives the pastry a glossy, golden surface when brushed on as wash.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream and oysters. Once the cream is added, the sauce should only cook briefly. Prolonged boiling can cause the cream to separate and the oysters to toughen and shrink, leaving a grainy, rubbery filling.

“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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