Custard tart

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

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. 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".

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. 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. 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.