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Dessert

Vol-au-Vent De Pommes a LA Reine

A vol-au-vent filled with apple compote and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vol-au-Vent De Pommes a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple filling

  1. Peel and core the apples, then place them in a saucepan with the sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and water.

  2. Cook the mixture until well combined, then pass it through a fine sieve.

  3. Butter the bottom of a saucepan and grate a little nutmeg into the butter.

  4. Pour the apple mixture into the saucepan and cook until it resembles marmalade.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the apple filling into a pre-cooked vol-au-vent case.

  2. For the meringue, whip the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 4 ounces of castor sugar, stirring until combined.

  3. Spread the meringue over the apple filling and bake in the oven until the meringue is light brown.

  4. Optionally, top with whipped cream instead of meringue.

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

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

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, cooking down to a soft, spreadable purée.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping, which sets and browns in the oven.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the filling and, in the meringue, stabilises the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Cooking the apple mixture to a marmalade consistency. Apples hold a lot of water, so the mixture must cook long enough to thicken. If it stays wet, the filling will soak into the pastry case and the meringue may weep or slide off.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, nutmeg, egg. 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.

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