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Vol Au Vent of Sweet-breads

A pastry shell filled with sweetbread in a cream and stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Sweet-breads

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in salt water for 2 hours.

  2. Boil them for 5 minutes, then wash in cold water, remove the skin, and cut into neat pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, then gradually stir in the cream and stock.

  2. Add the pepper, salt, and bay leaf; simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

Bake and fill

  1. Roll out the pastry to ½ inch thick, cut with a vol-au-vent cutter, marking the center with a smaller cutter.

  2. Bake in a hot oven (400°F/200°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. When done, carefully remove the top and take out the center.

  4. Add lemon juice to the sweetbreads, remove the bay leaf, and fill the vol-au-vent with the mixture.

  5. Replace the top, garnish with small sprays of parsley, and serve on a hot doily.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meat, whose tender texture forms the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and helps form its base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce gently. Stirring in the cream and stock gradually with the flour-butter base prevents lumps. Simmering slowly keeps the sauce smooth and stops the cream from scorching or separating.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, pepper. 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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