Casserole

How to spell casserole

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce casserole

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does casserole mean?

1. nounA dish of meat, vegetables, or other ingredients cooked slowly together in an oven.
2. nounA deep, lidded dish or pot used for cooking food slowly in an oven.

Casserole in a sentence

• She left the chicken casserole in the oven for an hour.

• He bought a heavy cast-iron casserole for braising meat.

• A hearty bean casserole is perfect for a cold evening.

• Transfer the browned onions into the casserole before adding stock.

Where does casserole come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived from French casserole, which named a saucepan or stewpan. That French term grew from casse, an older word for a ladle or shallow pan, with the ending -role acting as a diminutive, so the whole literally suggested a 'little pan'. The trail runs back through Old Provençal cassa to the Late Latin cattia, a word for a ladle or scoop, which itself may echo the Greek kyathion, a small cup or dipper. English took the word in the early 1700s for the cooking vessel, and only later did it also come to mean the food slowly baked inside that vessel. The single 's' followed by a doubled one, the unexpected '-ole' rather than '-oll' or '-owl', and the silent French flavour of the ending are exactly the traps that trip up a confident speller.

How the word is built

• casse- (from French casse: pan, ladle)
• -role (diminutive suffix)