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Vol Au Vent of Oysters

A puff pastry shell filled with a creamy oyster mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 pastry

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

  2. Make puff pastry using 6 oz. of flour and 5 oz. of butter, adding lemon juice, water, and egg yolk.

  3. Roll the pastry to ½‑inch thickness and cut out a vol‑au‑vent shape.

  4. Make an incision in the center to hold the oyster mixture.

  5. Brush the top with egg wash and bake until risen and golden.

Make the oyster filling

  1. In a saucepan, scald the oysters and strain the liquor.

  2. Remove the oysters' gills and set aside.

  3. In the saucepan, melt butter and mix in flour, then add the oyster liquor, lemon juice, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir in the cream and cook until thickened.

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 flavor and texture of the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor in the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquor into a smooth sauce.
Egg
Enriches the pastry and gives the top a golden glaze.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and cook until thickened. Cooking the flour-butter base and liquid until thickened lets starch swell and set the sauce. Undercooking leaves it thin and floury-tasting, while overheating after adding cream can cause it to break or curdle.

“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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