Meanings
plural vol-au-vents · plural vols-au-vent · alternative vol au vent
- A small circular piece of puff pastry with a hole for various fillings, such as mushrooms, prawns, fruit, cheese, etc.
Classic bistro fare—including quiche Lorraine and vols-au-vent—make for a light lunch comme il faut.
2016, Cancún & the Riviera Maya with Cozumel & the Best of the Yucatán, 4th edition, Fodor’s Travel, →ISBN, page 1474 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?
2007 March 13, Ashley Pharoah, Life on Mars, Season 2, Episode 4A 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.
2009, Ruth Hamilton, The Reading Room, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 342Predictably, 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.
2016, James Swallow, Nomad, Zaffre Publishing, →ISBN, page 237Want 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.
2018 January 9, Martin Daubney, “Pale, male and stale: is being a white man now bad for your career?”, in The Telegraph
Origin
- Frenchvol-au-vent“windblown”
- Englishvol-au-vent
Unadapted borrowing from French vol-au-vent (“windblown”, literally “flight in the wind”).
More words from French
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Finnish vannike
- vannikepuff pastry with fillings
French vol-au-vent
- vol-au-ventpuff pastry with fillings
Irish vol-au-vent, puthphióg
- vol-au-ventpuff pastry with fillings
- puthphiógpuff pastry with fillings
Italian vol-au-vent
- vol-au-ventpuff pastry with fillings
Polish vol-au-vent
- vol-au-ventpuff pastry with fillings
Swedish volauvent
- volauventpuff pastry with fillings
Cite this entry
vol-au-vent. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/vol-au-vent
“vol-au-vent.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/vol-au-vent. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “vol-au-vent,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/vol-au-vent.
Source: vol-au-vent on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.