At this time of year, I like to make my vol au vents. For, the fire never be allowed to damp down completely in my oven (which be the time for to make meringues in summer); in winter 'tis a thrifty way to let it burn a little higher for to cook pie & pastry cases - and to let us gather cosily before it to do our mending, or crafting, or story-telling. 'Tis also the time the Ladies Maids spend hours cleaning & pressing the endless mud & manure from hems of cloaks & and gowns & stocking soles. While the Bootboy, with a dull knife, hacks clods of chalk, and mud & excrement from boots and patterns alike, before ever he can polish them. It hath oft caused me to grin that what the Gentry eat and when is predicated by their Cooks & not by 'Tradition' - inasmuch as 'twere Cooks who forged the tradition!
Now I know scores of receipts - not solely for meat and fowl and fish; but for possets and medicinals and ungents; and to clear fleas from a bedchamber. These I have partly got from souls met upon my travels and from friends of my husband. But the most of them I have got from my mother & grandam; and they from their foremothers and so on back down the years.
One thing our Betters no doubt do not know is that Cooks, like Minstrels of old, do have prodigious memories. 'Twas for this very reason that I'd never learned the reading and writing 'til recent times. For I were afeared that if I let all that kind of remembering into my head 'twould push out the other remembering I had, and I'd be left not knowing how to throw together so much as a pease-pudding to earn my living.
But time be always on the march and since our husbandmen and sons lost their lives repelling that French Boney, bless me if the Gentry have not taken to lauding all that be French - from their poetry to their fashions to their Ladies undergarments: to the very food they put in their bellies! 'Twas originally only the fashion of Royalty and the Court to provide these strange dishes. But in time, of course, every hostess who wished to retain or improve her place upon the Societal ladder was now up to her dainty elbows in pond-life & garden. For French cuisine be most startling and eclectic.
Take the first time I were asked to make "Volly Vonts". First I heard of 'em was when a receipt was handed me by Mrs. A . the Housekeeper; scratched out by Mistress(she hath not the Art of writing but doth cover the page with gossamer-thin circles & squares and scrape heavy black lines which tore the paper.) Well I peered & skinted but could not make head nor tail of what they was, for I'd never in my life before come across 'em so had no idea if they be fish, flesh or good red herring.
So I asks Mrs.A, and Mrs. A asks Misstres and the answer come back that they is "delicious little French morsels" which, in the manner of speaking of Mrs.A, I heard as "mussels".
They be French mussels? I pondered. How am I to procure such in Brighton? Yet, I had eaten French mussels afore this, brought back by fishermen, and to my mind there was naught made them more 'delicious' So how could one tell which were which? 'Tis not as if the blessed things comes out their shells waving French flags, now is it? Well then, why should I not march straightaway to John Gunn down by the strand and buy some good Brighton mussels? Mayhap we could teach 'em to say "Ooh la!" when placed on the table? And I remember giggling away to that thought.
But no. After a little more to-ing and fro-ing between the three of us, it appeared that indeed, a 'morsel' was what she had said...but what the blessed good was that? A nice bit of pork-pie or a sliver of boiled tripe may be a 'delicious morsel' to some, I shouldn't wonder.
So finally I has to put on my bonnet and go across the Square the The Admiral's house, where lives that hoighty-toity Madame Moysell who is a Ladies Maid. (Though I am sure myself 'tis many a long year since that one hath been a maid!).
And what do these Volly Vonts turn out to be but tarts; pure & simple! Tarts made with the mixture which sweet young M. Careme showed me how to make long ago, in a sheltered camp by the side of a French river!
Having thanked her politely for the information Madame Moysell addressed me once more as I turned to go:
"Now mind," says she "Tell your Mistress that the true French way to serve vol au vents is kept secret outside of France... but that it is the thing to serve them garnished with Dandelion - leaves and flowers!" and then she doth laugh and whinny and snort like the butcher's carthorse, until Pearce, the Butler, a-polishing of his silver cries:
"For shame!"
and explains to me her unnatural and sudden mirth.
It seems that this name - Volley Vonts - be the way the words "a fart in the wind" be spoken in the French tongue - the dirty divils!Though I mind this be rather a droll name for a dish & a fine jest on all the dainty English hostesses who pronounced its name so reverently; 'twas the Dandelion garnish which had piqued me. Madam Moysell was but a sojourner on our shores while I was born & bred in these Isles! How dare she assume that I knew not that the common name for the Dandelion be 'Piss-a-bed'!
Did she think me so soft in the attic I would not understand she would have me bid my mistress to serve her farts in a bed of piss - the coarse old harridan!! Very nice - I don't think - for her as calls herself an Upper Servant!
So I sniffed and bid them both Good day, for mayhap 'twas meant merely as a jape. Yet I resolved to keep my mouth closed firmly about the name of the fancy wee tarts - for my mistress would be sure to go into a decline if she were ever to be apprised of the translation of what she were offering her guests! (Though it were a joy to tell Mary-Anne that night and we laughed till our laces almost split!)
When Mary-Anne came in just now, from the dark & wet wind outside to see the first batch of pastry cases cooling upon the table, I smiled and asked did she remember the first time ever I made these 'delicious morsels'? She smiled too, but then turned her back and began to return to the door.
"Wherever are you going?" I cried
and she swung her head back as she called, laughing;
"To pick some dandelions!"
So in truth I think these ‘delicious morsels' should not be called Volly Vents at all, but "Folly" Vonts for all the trouble they have caused me! And I shall never, ever, serve them with dandylions!!
Comments
Post a Comment