Vol-au-vent

//ˌvɒl.əʊˈvɑ̃// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A small circular piece of puff pastry with a hole for various fillings, such as mushrooms, prawns, fruit, cheese, etc.

    "Ray Carling: Some nicely chilled Blue Nun and some vol-au-vents? This is Manc the Knife, is it?... Chris Skelton: What's a vol-au-vent?... Ray: It's a puff pastry shell filled with a savory meat mixture... Chris: You mean a pie, then?"

  2. 2
    puff paste shell filled with a savory meat mixture usually with a sauce wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
blintzdanish pastryeclairpandowdypastrypasty

Example

More examples

"Ray Carling: Some nicely chilled Blue Nun and some vol-au-vents? This is Manc the Knife, is it?... Chris Skelton: What's a vol-au-vent?... Ray: It's a puff pastry shell filled with a savory meat mixture... Chris: You mean a pie, then?"

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French vol-au-vent (“windblown”, literally “flight in the wind”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.