Vol-au-vent

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?

A few offered to come for me, but they’re all up to their eyes in flans and vols-au-vent and God knows what else, so I told them I’d made my own arrangements.

Classic bistro fare—including quiche Lorraine and vols-au-vent—make for a light lunch comme il faut.

Predictably, the result was an immediate surge of panic as the embassy’s guests discarded their vols-au-vent and sought to put as much distance as they could between the outbreak of ‘fire’ and themselves.

Want to get heads rotating at your next dinner party or drinks get-together? Try tabling the morsel, “has there ever been a worse time to be a middle-aged white man in the world of work?” and watch the vol-au-vents fly.