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Vol-au-vent Op Sweetbreads, Mushrooms, and Potato Balls

A vol-au-vent filled with sweetbreads, mushrooms, and potato balls in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 26 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vol-au-vent Op Sweetbreads, Mushrooms, and Potato Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the case

  1. Order a two-pound loaf.

  2. Bake in an oval cake tin until it is one day old.

  3. Cut off the top above the tin, scoop out the crumb leaving ¾ inch all around and at the bottom, and pare off the crust.

  4. Dip the case into ½ cup oiled butter and bake for 20 minutes.

  5. Redip in butter and bake until pale bright brown.

Make the sweetbread sauce

  1. Cut off the pith and skin of the sweetbreads, blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, cut into equal pieces, soak in cold water for 1 hour, and dry.

  2. Dredge with 2 teaspoons baked flour.

  3. Rub a stewpan with garlic.

  4. Add 2 ounces butter, sweetbreads, 1 teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon white pepper, grated nutmeg, lemon rind, parsley, laurel leaf, bay leaf, mace, cloves, lemon juice, white wine, and veal stock.

  5. Boil quickly, skim, and simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  6. Remove sweetbreads, then skim and strain the sauce.

  7. Add beaten egg yolks and ½ cup thick cream, and boil for 2 minutes.

Cook the mushrooms and potatoes

  1. Remove the skin from the mushrooms.

  2. Boil in 1 pint boiling water with ¼ teaspoon salt and lemon juice for 12 minutes, then drain.

  3. Boil the potatoes with ¼ teaspoon salt and 1 ounce fresh butter.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + laureltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the hollow case that holds the filling; stale bread holds its shape better when baked.
Butter
Browns the case's surface and adds richness to the crust and sauce.
Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the main filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat and add richness.
Cream
Adds body and smoothness to the sauce, softening its texture.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavor and a tender, juicy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks without boiling them hard. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce boils after they are added, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, laurel):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, laurel. 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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