I haven’t eaten a Zinger, Ho-Ho or Twinkie in years, but I just returned from the grocery store where I bought a box of each, as archetypal American snack cake maker Hostess is shutting its doors as of this Tuesday. What a downer to end the week! Oh sure, some large packaged goods maker will probably come along and pick up the brands at some point. But then maybe they won’t. And riddle me this: can the kitsch bakers who’ve made good off of upscale Twinkie and Ding Dong knock-offs survive for long without the real thing? When no one will get the joke anymore? I think not. There will be a large ripple effect from today’s announcement, my friends. Very large indeed.

Reader Jayne wants to know how puff pastry can rise without any yeast, which is present in other laminated doughs like Danish and croissant. Jayne, I love your question and I thank you for asking it. The answer is: steam. Puff pastry needs no leavening agent because it’s comprised of hundreds and hundreds of individual layers of dough, all of them separated by layers of butter. When the pastry is inserted in the oven the butter melts, freeing and lubricating the dough sheets so they can separate from one another.

Looks like Mssr. Hollande is taking lessons from Mayor Bloomberg.

I stole away for a quick business trip while you weren’t looking. I’m back now with a renewed focus on the things that really matter. Like butter.

Carême wasn’t without his critics. One of them was another of the world’s great food innovators, Antoine Beavilliers. Beauvilliers is credited with inventing the first “true” restaurant, which is to say, an eating establishment that combined food with décor, expert service and a top-notch wine cellar. His restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres was the place to be seen in Paris both before and after the Revolution (it was closed during it), and was frequented by Brillat-Savarin, the gastronome and writer whose famous quote “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are” appears at the beginning of Iron Chef episodes.

One of Carême’s great legacies was the hierarchy he developed for French sauces. Prior to his arrival on the scene there were literally hundreds of sauces in the French culinary canon, many of them absurdly elaborate, containing dozens of ingredients. At Talleyrand’s urging, Carême took on the project of organizing and simplifying them. The result was a system based on four “mother sauces” from which all others were derived. They were:

Antonin Carême was, how do you say in your country, a very interesting fellow. Yes, he may have been responsible for vol-au-vent, Napoleons and other pastries we know today, but these are only a sneeze in ze bucket when you consider what he did not just for French food, but for European cuisine as a whole.

“Lifted by the breeze” or thereabouts. “A waft of wind” is more precise. The term is evocative of the ultra-light and airy puff pastry case. Ironically that case is all-too-often stuffed with an overly heavy filling. Worst case scenario, the pastry case itself is thick and heavy, and the whole thing sinks in the gut like the SS Carpathia after a couple of German torpedoes. All of which is to say that if you’ve never had a good vol-au-vent you’re in for a treat.

I must have some readers planning to do some fancy entertaining this holiday season, because I’ve had three requests for these recently. Most people have seen vols-au-vent before: little (or large) puff pasty cases that hold fillings of various kinds, usually savory. Any ideas on such fillings — sweet or savory — are welcome. I’ve never done these before with homemade puff pastry, and frankly find the prospect a little intimidating. Which means this should be fun!