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Vol- Au- Vent

A savory filling of turkey or veal with lemon peel, anchovy, garlic, onion, gravy, lemon pickle, white wine, and butter served in a vol-au-vent.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Vol- Au- Vent

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Season the turkey or veal with lemon peel, white pepper, mace, and salt.

  2. Add the anchovy, garlic, onion, gravy, lemon pickle, white wine, and butter.

  3. Heat the mixture until hot, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture in the prepared vol-au-vent.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Lemon + garlictop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  4. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold turkey or veal
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the filling.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the sauce and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Good gravy
Supplies the liquid that moistens the meat and carries the other flavors.
Anchovy
Adds deep savory saltiness that rounds out the filling without tasting distinctly fishy.
Lemon pickle
Contributes acidity and tangy citrus flavor to balance the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until hot, but do not let it boil.. Boiling can toughen the meat proteins and cause the flour-thickened butter sauce to break or turn grainy. Gentle heating keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, lemon, mace, anchovy, clove, garlic, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, lemon, mace, anchovy, clove, garlic, onion. 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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