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Vol Au Vent of Chicken or Meat

A puff pastry case filled with a chicken or mutton mixture in white sauce, topped with lemon and spices.

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 Chicken or Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roll out the puff pastry and cut one thin round and three thicker rings.

  3. Join the rings to the round using egg white.

  4. Brush the pastry with egg yolk.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the chicken, ham, truffle, and mushrooms.

  2. Heat the mixture in the white sauce, then add lemon juice, seasoning, and beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the pastry case until golden brown.

  2. Fill the baked case with the hot filling and serve immediately.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Truffle + hamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered case that holds the filling.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess that binds the filling together.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set during heating to thicken the filling.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and filling.

The step that matters

Heating the filling with beaten eggs. Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the filling. If the mixture gets too hot or is stirred too vigorously, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth and creamy.

“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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