The rule here is that each term is defined in one place. Terms whose full treatment belongs to a section are listed at the foot of this page with a pointer, rather than summarised twice and drifting apart. The definitions below are the ones this page owns.
Defined here
- boulangeriefr
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A French bread bakery. The term is LEGALLY PROTECTED in France: a shop may only call itself a boulangerie if it bakes its bread from scratch on the premises, from raw flour, water, yeast and salt. It may not sell bread baked from frozen dough or bought in from elsewhere.
- patisseriefr
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A French pastry shop. Also legally controlled in France and Belgium: only a shop with a certified maitre patissier may use the name.
- viennoiseriefr
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The third category: enriched, laminated or sweetened doughs that sit between bread and pastry - croissants, pains au chocolat, brioche, pains au lait.
- sconeen
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A small British quick bread, raised with baking powder rather than yeast, usually round and roughly 5-6 cm across, split horizontally to serve.
- briochefr
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An enriched French yeast dough - wheat flour with a high proportion of butter and egg. Sits in the viennoiserie category.
- coulisfr
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A thin uncooked or barely cooked fruit puree, strained smooth and used as a sauce.
- compotefr
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Fruit cooked gently in syrup, keeping recognisable pieces.
- confiturefr
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French for jam.
- gateaufr
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French for cake.
- figuefr
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French for fig.
- pain perdufr
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Literally "lost bread" - stale bread soaked in egg and milk and fried. The French name for what English calls French toast.
- eclairfr
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A choux pastry finger, filled with cream and glazed on top. The name means "lightning".
- grand-mère (à la / de)fr
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Literally grandmother. In a recipe title, "de grand-mère" or "à la grand-mère" is a genre marker rather than an attribution: it signals the plain, old-fashioned, home-kitchen version of a dish as against a refined or restaurant one.
- milk and cookiesen
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The plate of biscuits and glass of milk left out on Christmas Eve. In English the pairing is a fixed phrase rather than a recipe, and the query behind it is asking what the custom means and where it comes from.
The three French shop names are a legal hierarchy
The single most useful thing to know about French baking vocabulary is that boulangerie is not a synonym for bakery. It is a protected term: a shop in France may only call itself a boulangerie if it bakes its bread from scratch on the premises, from raw flour, water, yeast and salt. It may not sell bread baked from frozen dough, and it may not sell bread bought in from elsewhere. A shop that does those things sells bread, but it is not permitted the name.
Pâtisserie is controlled in the same spirit in France and Belgium: the name requires a certified maître pâtissier. And viennoiserie is the third category rather than a third kind of shop, covering the enriched, laminated and sweetened doughs that sit between bread and pastry, so croissants, pains au chocolat, brioche and pains au lait. The three terms only make sense as a set, which is the framing the French schools use themselves.
The practical consequence for a visitor: a boulangerie sign is a claim about method, not about size or quality of fit-out. It is the most reliable signal on a French high street.
Defined in their own section
These terms need more than a line, so the full treatment lives with the technique or ingredient it belongs to.
Technique: fondant, creme patissiere, patissier, pate sucree, blind bake, mousseline.
Kitchen: maryse.
Nordic: kummin, lussekatt, kavring.
Why borrowed words drift
A term borrowed into another language keeps its shape and loses its edges. Compote and coulis both arrive in English as loose words for fruit-in-sauce, when in French they name two different operations: one is cooked with the pieces intact, the other is puréed raw and strained. Brioche arrives as a word for a rich bread, losing the fact that it names a category defined by its proportion of butter and egg rather than a single loaf. None of that is anybody's error, but it does mean a French recipe read through an English understanding of its own vocabulary can ask for something other than what you think.
Two words that are not baking terms at all
Worth saying plainly, because both get searched alongside the real vocabulary. FIGJAM in one word is Australian slang, an acronym for a crude boast recorded in Collins and elsewhere, and has nothing to do with figs or preserves. And “milk and cookies” as a phrase has no reliable culinary definition; it reads as an idiom or a title, and inventing a meaning for it would be worse than leaving it out, so it is left out.
Questions about the vocabulary
What does boulangerie mean?
A French bread bakery, and specifically a protected one. A shop may only use the name if it bakes its bread from scratch on the premises from flour, water, yeast and salt. Selling bread baked from frozen dough, or bought in, disqualifies it. “It means bakery” misses the part that matters.
What is the difference between a boulangerie and a pâtisserie?
A boulangerie is defined by bread baked on site; a pâtisserie is defined by a certified maître pâtissier and is a pastry shop. A boulangerie may well sell pastries, but they are generally simpler than a pâtisserie’s.
What counts as viennoiserie?
The enriched, laminated or sweetened doughs between bread and pastry: croissants, pains au chocolat, brioche, pains au lait. It is a category of dough rather than a type of shop.
What does a scone look like?
A small British quick bread, raised with baking powder rather than yeast, usually round and roughly 5 to 6 cm across, and split horizontally to serve. The height is the giveaway, since a scone is deep for its width in a way a biscuit or a cookie is not.
What is the difference between a coulis and a compote?
A coulis is a thin fruit purée, uncooked or barely cooked, strained smooth and used as a sauce. A compote is fruit cooked gently in syrup with the pieces kept recognisable. One is poured, the other is spooned.