Bouchee a la Reine

Bouchee a la Reine is a small individual round puff-pastry case — a miniature vol-au-vent — filled with a savory mixture in a white sauce. The dish is named for a queen of France; by tradition, the queen is Marie Leszczynska, queen consort from 1725 to 1768 and wife of Louis XV. The small pastry cases are said to have been created in her honor at court, though the documentary basis for the specific attribution is uncertain. The preparation was refined and popularized in the nineteenth century by Marie-Antoine Careme, who standardized the vol-au-vent family of dishes of which the bouchee is the small individual version. The classic filling is chicken or veal sweetbreads with mushrooms in a veloute or bechamel-based white sauce.

A bouchee a la Reine arrives as a golden, hollow puff-pastry case, the lid set beside it, filled to the brim with chicken and mushrooms in a glossy white sauce. The pastry is flaky and shattering, the filling rich and savory; the contrast of the crisp shell against the creamy interior is the point. Eaten hot, the dish is a classic of the starter course.

Bouchee a la Reine rests on the lamination of puff pastry and a white-sauce filling. The case is made from pate feuilletee — puff pastry — cut into a small cylinder with a recessed lid, then baked; in the oven, the water in the dough's butter turns to steam and lifts the hundreds of alternating dough-and-butter layers apart, and the proteins set the inflated, hollow shape. Baking blind keeps the cavity open for filling. The white sauce — a veloute or bechamel thickened with a roux — is the binder; the sweetbreads or chicken and mushrooms are folded in and the whole is ladled into the case just before serving, so the pastry stays crisp. The case's flakiness against the creamy filling is the dish's defining contrast.