Food Fit for a Queen Bouchee a la Reine

A bouchée à la reine (roughly translates to “the queen’s bite”) is a type of vol-au-vent, a small hollow puff pastry case filled with warm ingredients. In bouchée à la reine, the filling is typically made with béchamel (flour, butter, milk and often nutmeg), diced chicken breasts and mushrooms. The filling is called salpicon, vegetables, fish and/or meat and held together by a white creamy sauce, either served cold or warm. However, there isn’t an “official” recipe of bouchée à la reine and you will certainly find many variations of this dish today; notably, some bouchées use truffles, parsley and different types of creamy sauces. The dish is attributed to Louis XV’s wife, Marie Leczcinska, whose father, the king of Poland and duke of Lorraine; as such, bouchées à la reine are typically thought of as regional cuisine from the Lorraine area in the north-east of France. Legend has it that this dish was created when Queen Marie asked her cooks to invent a dish for her husband in order to regain his favor (the king had mistresses like the famous Madame de Pompadour)!