clafouti

noun

cla·​fou·​ti ˌklä-fü-ˈtē 

variants or less commonly clafoutis

: a dessert consisting of a layer of fruit (such as cherries) topped with batter and baked

Examples of clafouti in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Lately, there’s been duck a l’orange with blueberry clafouti, chicken in calvados with crème brulee.,and beef short ribs with banana pudding, just to change it up a bit. —Beth Segal, cleveland, 19 May 2020

But the clafouti, for instance, is no more complicated than a pancake batter and results in something so satisfying that, in fact, a modest number of bites will suffice. —Corby Kummer, The Atlantic, 11 Dec. 2019

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from French clafouti, clafoutis, originally in dialects of west-central France (Poitou, Berry) and adjacent Occitan dialects of Limousin, of uncertain origin

Note: According to a hypothesis in Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, seconded by Bloch and Wartburg (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française), clafouti is a sort of portmanteau word. The initial element claf- is an outcome of the Gallo-Romance verb represented by Old French claufir "to attach with nails" (ultimately a univerbation of Latin clavō figere). The corresponding verb in Alpine Occitan dialects—though not in Limousin—is clafir "to fill, stuff." This base is allegedly blended with fout-, the stem of foutre "to have sexual intercourse with, fuck," figuratively "to throw, place carelessly, strike" (going back to Latin futuere) with many derivatives in dialects. The final element is the deverbal suffix -i(s), forming nouns denoting a product of the verbal action, often somehing mixed, crushed, or jumbled (as fouillis "mess, jumble," gâchis "waste, mess," hachis "minced meat," torchis "mixture of clay and straw"); it goes back to Old French -ëiz, going back to Vulgar Latin *-ātīcium.

First Known Use

1926, in the meaning defined above