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Dessert

Another Way to Make Vol-au-vent

A pastry shell filled with a sauce of oysters, stock, butter, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, salt, wine, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Vol-au-vent

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters and separate them from the liquor, straining the liquor.

Make the filling

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters and add the liquor, white stock, butter, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, and salt.

  2. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Before adding to the vol-au-vent, remove the mace and lemon peel.

  4. Stir in the white wine and heavy cream, and heat until hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Oysters
Provide the main filling, with their briny flavor central to the dish.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the liquid and adds richness to the sauce.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its texture.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and briny oysters.

The step that matters

Heating after the cream goes in. Once cream is added, the sauce should be heated until hot but not allowed to boil hard, since strong boiling can cause dairy to separate and make the sauce grainy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, mace, lemon, white wine, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, mace, lemon, white wine, cream. 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.

More vol-au-vent recipes

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