Name: Bouchée à la Reine
Prep time: 35 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h 15 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 6 puff pastry vol-au-vent cases, or 500 g puff pastry; 1 egg, beaten; 400 g chicken breast, diced; 200 g button mushrooms, quartered; 150 g veal sweetbreads, blanched and diced, or extra chicken; 60 g butter; 2 shallots, finely chopped; 40 g plain flour; 150 ml dry white wine; 400 ml chicken stock; 150 ml double cream; 1 tsp fine sea salt; ½ tsp white pepper; ¼ tsp ground nutmeg; 2 tbsp lemon juice; 20 g flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Bouchée à la Reine

Puff pastry cases filled with chicken, sweetbreads and mushrooms in a cream sauce. Named for Queen Marie Leszczyńska, who is said to have needed cheering up.

1 hr 15 min total Serves 6 servings Medium

The pastry cases are baked blind and empty, and filled only at the last minute — filling raises the steam that keeps puff pastry crisp, and a case that sits full for even ten minutes goes soft at the base. The filling must also be thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon, because a loose sauce goes straight through the pastry. Reduce it further than looks necessary; it loosens again as it warms in the oven.

Bouchée à la Reine, in preparation
Photograph credit: Bouchée à la reine by Arnaud 25 · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

How to Make Bouchée à la Reine

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Heat the oven to 200°C / 400°F. Brush the pastry cases with beaten egg and bake them empty for 20 minutes, until risen and deep gold. Keep warm.
While the cases bake, poach the diced chicken in the stock for 8 minutes, then lift it out with a slotted spoon and reserve the stock.
Melt the butter and cook the shallots 3 minutes, then the mushrooms for 6 minutes until their water has gone.
Stir in the flour and cook 2 minutes. Add the wine and boil 2 minutes, then the reserved stock gradually, whisking.
Simmer 10 minutes until very thick, then add the cream and reduce a further 5 minutes. It should mound on a spoon.
Return the chicken and sweetbreads, season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and lemon, and warm through.
Fill the warm cases at the last possible moment, scatter with parsley, and serve immediately.

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Worth Getting Right

Bake the cases empty. Filling them early softens the base.
Reduce the filling further than feels right — it loosens in the oven.
Fill at the last second.

Changing the Recipe

In a sauce, full-fat crème fraîche can usually take the place of the double cream; single cream is thinner and more likely to split if it boils, so keep it below a simmer.
A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.

Pairs Well With

Green salad · A glass of white Burgundy · Buttered rice

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: French Baguette, Fougasse, French Lentils.

Storage

The filling keeps 2 days refrigerated. Cases keep 2 days in a tin. Assemble to order.

Bouchée à la Reine Nutrition Facts

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

No Added Sugar