A vol-au-vent is a small round case of very light, flaky pastry with a hollow middle, filled with something savoury — chicken in a creamy sauce, mushrooms, prawns, tuna — and eaten in one or two bites. It is party food and buffet food: you see trays of them at weddings, at office Christmas parties, at old-fashioned dinner parties, in the frozen or chilled section of a British or French supermarket. The word is French and keeps its French look, with two hyphens, and English speakers say it roughly "vol-oh-VON", swallowing the final n. The plural is usually written vol-au-vents. It carries a slight feeling of the 1970s and 80s in Britain — a bit dated, a bit fancy-in-a-homely-way — so people sometimes name it half-jokingly when they talk about parties of that era. It is much more common in British English than American, where similar things are often just called pastry cups or puff pastry shells. Note that the word names the pastry case; what goes inside can be almost anything, which is why you hear "chicken vol-au-vents", "mushroom vol-au-vents".