Custard tart

Custard tart

Type	Pastry
Main ingredients	Pastry crust, egg custard
Cookbook: Custard tart  Media: Custard tart

Custard tarts or flans pâtissier are a pastry consisting of an outer pastry crust filled with egg custard and baked.^[1]

History

The development of custard is so intimately connected with the custard tart or pie that the word itself comes from the old French croustade, meaning a kind of pie.^[2] Some other names for varieties of custard tarts in the Middle Ages were doucettes and darioles. In 1399, the coronation banquet prepared for Henry IV included "doucettys".^[3]

Medieval recipes generally included a shortcrust and puff pastry case filled with a mixture of cream, milk, or broth with eggs, sweeteners such as sugar or honey, and sometimes spices. Recipes existed as early as the fourteenth century that would still be recognisable as custard tarts today.^[4] Tarts could also be prepared with almond milk during times of fasting such as Lent, though this was rather expensive and would have been popular only with the comparatively wealthy.^[5] Often, savoury ingredients such as minced pork or beef marrow were also added (the combining of sweet and savoury ingredients was more common in medieval England), but unlike a modern quiche the custard filling itself was invariably sweet.^[3]

Modern versions

A fruit-topped tart with custard filling.

Modern custard tarts are usually made from shortcrust pastry, eggs, sugar, milk or cream, and vanilla, sprinkled with nutmeg and baked. Unlike egg tarts, custard tarts are normally served at room temperature. They are available either as individual tarts, generally around 8 cm (3.1 in) across, or as larger tarts intended to be divided into slices.

Britain and Commonwealth

Custard tarts have long been a favourite pastry in Britain and the Commonwealth. They are often called egg custard tarts or simply egg custards to distinguish the egg-based filling from the commonly served cornflour-based custards. They are sold in supermarkets and bakeries throughout the UK.

In Britain, the custard tart is regarded as a classic British dish. A version by Marcus Wareing was selected on the BBC television program Great British Menu as the final course of a banquet to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's 80th birthday.^[6]

Variations on the classic recipe include the Manchester tart, where a layer of jam is spread on the pastry before the custard is added. Other versions may have some fresh fruit, such as rhubarb, cooked into the filling.^[7] Versions topped with elaborate arrangements of fruit show the influence of French pâtisserie.

Hong Kong

France

A French custard tart.

Custard tarts in France – where they are known as flans pâtissier – are generally shallower and larger than British ones, and therefore served in slices rather than as individual items. Their filling may contain fruit, making them similar to clafoutis.

Romania

See also

• Pastry
• Buttermilk pie
• Chocolate tart
• Pastel de nata
• List of custard desserts
• List of desserts
• List of pies, tarts and flans

References

External links

• History and recipe of the custard tart

British pies
Sweet	Apple pie Bakewell tart Banoffee pie Bedfordshire clanger Black bun Custard tart Manchester tart Mince pie Rhubarb pie Treacle tart
Savoury	Bacon and egg pie Bedfordshire clanger Bridie Butter pie Chicken and mushroom pie Corned beef pie Cornish pasty Cottage pie Cumberland pie Curry pie Devizes pie Fish pie Game pie Homity pie Killie pie Meat and potato pie Melton Mowbray pork pie Pork pie Scotch pie Shepherd's Pie Squab pie Stargazy pie Steak pie Steak and kidney pie Steak and oyster pie Woolton pie
Manufacturers	Clark's Pies Dickinson & Morris Fray Bentos Ginsters Higgidy Holland's Pies Mr Kipling Peter's Poole's Pork Farms Pukka Pies Shire Foods Square Pie Wall's Wrights Pies