Quiche

Quiche

Quiche
Type	Savoury pie
Place of origin	France
Main ingredients	Pastry case filled with custard and cheese, meat, seafood or vegetables
Cookbook: Quiche  Media: Quiche

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

The word is first attested in English in 1805, borrowed from the French, itself first attested in 1605; the further etymology is uncertain but it may be related to the German Kuchen meaning "cake" or "tart".^{[1] [2]}

History

Quiche is considered a 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^[3] and in 15th-century cookbooks as well.^[4]

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

Comics

• "Quiche Lorraine" is a minor fictional character (1982-83) in the comic strip Bloom County.
• In the comic series Bone (1991-2004), one of the rat-creature characters continually states that he wants to cook Fone Bone in a quiche.

Film

• In the James Bond film, A View to a Kill (1985), 007 makes a quiche for Stacey Sutton. When she inquires what it is, Bond replies that it's an omelette.

Literature

• Bruce Feirstein's bestseller Real Men Don't Eat Quiche (1982) attempts to humorously stereotype quiche as a feminine food in the context of American culture.

Music

• "Quiche Lorraine" is a song from The B-52's album Wild Planet(1980).

Television

• The Red Dwarf episode "Polymorph" (1989) contains a scene in which Arnold Rimmer, after having all his anger sucked out of him, wears a T-shirt, which states, "Give Quiche a Chance."

References

Notes

1. Oxford English Dictionary, OUP 2015, s.v.. Accessed 4 February 2016.
2. 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
3. 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.
4. Austin, Thomas, ed. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books. London, EETS OS 91, 1888, repr. 1964.

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
• "Definition of quiche by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia". Thefreedictionary.com. Retrieved 17 March 2012.
• "Quiche Origins, History & Recipes". Foodreference.com. Retrieved 17 March 2012.

External links

• "French Food Culture and Recipes". France-property-and-information.com. Retrieved 17 March 2012.
• "Recipe - Classic Quiche Lorraine". Cooks.com. Retrieved 17 March 2012.