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Dessert

Small Vols-au-vents, a LA Howitt

A creamy filling for small puff pastry shells made with cream, butter, flour, eggs, sugar, and crushed ratitias.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Small Vols-au-vents, a LA Howitt

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the boiling cream or milk and cream mixture, then stir over low heat until thick.

  2. Remove from heat and stir well. Return to low heat and simmer for 6 to 8 minutes.

  3. Pour into a basin and immediately add pounded sugar, butter, and store-flavouring or lemon rind.

  4. For the ratitias, crush them to a powder and mix in.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare small vols-au-vents as directed, ice the edges with sifted sugar, and melt with a heated shovel.

  2. Fill the vols-au-vents with the prepared cream 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Cream or milk
Provides the liquid base that thickens into a rich, smooth custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with heat and add richness and colour.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and mouthfeel.
Flour
Helps thicken the cream so it holds its shape in the filling.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds body to the cream.
Ratitias
Add a crushed almond-like flavour and slightly crunchy texture to the cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream over low heat. Egg yolks and starch thicken the cream only gently; high heat or long boiling can scramble the yolks or break the custard, so keep heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, butter, flour, 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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