Quiche

For other uses, see Quiche (disambiguation).

Quiche

Quiche
Origin
Place of origin	France
Details
Type	Savoury pie
Main ingredient(s)	Custard, cheese, meat, seafood, vegetables

Quiche (/ˈkiːʃ/ KEESH) is a savoury, open-faced pastry crust with a filling of savoury custard with cheese, meat, seafood, and/or vegetables. Quiche can be served hot or cold. It is part of French cuisine but is also popular in other countries, particularly as party food.

Overview

Etymology

A variety of tarts, with a quiche in the bottom left

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word came to English from the French quiche (first recorded in 1805); any further etymology is uncertain but may be related to the German Kuchen meaning "cake" or "tart".

History

The quiche is considered a classic French dish, however custards in pastry were known in English cuisine at least as early as the 14th century. Recipes for custards baked in pastry containing meat, fish and fruit are referred to Crustardes of flessh and Crustade in the 14th-century The Forme of Cury and in 15th-century cookbooks as well.

Varieties

Quiche has a pastry crust and a filling of eggs and milk or cream which, when baked, becomes a custard. It can be made with vegetables, meat and seafood.

Quiche lorraine

Quiche lorraine (named for the Lorraine region of France) is a popular variant that was originally an open pie with a filling of custard with lardons.

Other varieties

Quiche with spinach

Quiche with mushroom and leek

There are many variants of quiche, including a wide variety of ingredients. Variants may be named descriptively, often in French, e.g. quiche au fromage (quiche with cheese) and quiche aux champignons (quiche with mushrooms) or conventionally, e.g. florentine (spinach) and provençale (tomatoes).

In popular culture

• "Quiche Lorraine" is a song from the band The B-52's, which appears on their 1980 album Wild Planet.
• Bruce Feirstein's 1982 bestseller Real Men Don't Eat Quiche attempts to humorously stereotype quiche as a feminine food in the context of American culture.
• "Quiche Lorraine" was the name of one of the minor characters (1982-83) in the comic strip Bloom County.
• In the 1985 James Bond film, "A View to a Kill," 007 makes a quiche for Stacey Sutton. When she inquires what it is, Bond replies that it's an omelette.
• The 1989 Red Dwarf episode "Polymorph" contains a scene in which Arnold Rimmer wears a T-shirt which states "Give Quiche a Chance" after having all his anger sucked out of him.
• In the 1991-2004 comic series Bone, one of the rat-creature characters continually states that he wants to cook Fone Bone in a quiche.

References

Notes

Further reading

• Ange, E., & Aratow, P. (2005). La bonne cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange: the original companion for French home cooking. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
• Nathan, J. (2010). Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: my search for Jewish cooking in France. New York: Alfred A. Knopf

External links

• Oxford English Dictionary, OUP 2015. Accessed 12 February 2015.
• Quiche, Centre Nationale de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales. Accessed 12 February 2015.
  This source also notes the first reference to 1805, in J.-J. Lionnois, Hist. des villes vieille et neuve de Nancy..., Nancy, t. 1, p. 80
• Hieatt, Constance, and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglysch: English culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century (including the forme of cury). London, EETS SS 8, 1985.
• Austin, Thomas, ed. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books. London, EETS OS 91, 1888, repr. 1964.