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Vol-au-vent

A puff pastry shell filled with a rich fricassee of lobster, sweetbreads, or other prepared fillings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Vol-au-vent

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the case

  1. Cut the puff pastry to fit the dish or stamp it out with a fluted tin.

  2. Mark the cover about 1 inch from the edge and ornament it with a knife.

Bake

  1. Brush the yolk of egg over the pastry and place it in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until browned and baked through.

  3. Detach the cover with a knife and scoop out the soft crumb inside.

  4. Turn the vol-au-vent onto clean paper to drain excess butter.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill it with a rich fricassee of lobster, sweetbreads, or other prepared fillings.

  2. 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. Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lobster + turbottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Turbot + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Its layers of butter and dough puff in the oven to form a hollow, crisp case.
Yolk of egg
Brushed on top, it gives the pastry a glossy, golden browned surface.
Butter
Its fat is held between pastry layers, adding richness and helping the layers separate and flake.
Good white sauce
Its starch and fat thicken and enrich the filling, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Baking until fully baked through. Puff pastry must brown and dry out completely; if it is underbaked, the layers stay pale and soggy and the case will not hold the filling well.

“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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Fruit 13Chicken 7Oyster 6Strawberry 5Lobster 4Oysters in 4 See all 53 →

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