What does “enfourner” mean in a French recipe?

French compresses “put it in the oven” into a single verb: enfourner, from four (oven) with the prefix en-, “into.” Recipes use it as a bare command — enfourne trente-cinq minutes — with no need to mention the oven at all. Its mirror image is défourner, to take out of the oven, and between them they cover the whole baking step.

The en- + noun pattern builds plenty of others: boîte → emboîter (to fit together), barque → embarquer (to board), terre → enterrer (to bury). Colloquially enfourner also means to shovel food into your mouth: il a enfourné trois parts de tarte. In this tarte tatin it sits among the other clipped kitchen imperatives worth collecting — réserve (set aside), pique la pâte (prick the pastry), démoule (turn it out).